PRAYER QUOTES II
quotations about prayer
There is a practical utility to Scripture reading. But prayer? Prayer is absurd, inefficient, immeasurable. Stupid. Unless it's true that God exists, interacts, and cares, in which case prayer is an inexhaustible gift to my spirit.
AMY JULIA BECKER
"Prayer Is Stupid, Unless...", Thin Places, April 22, 2010
The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.
BRET HARTE
attributed, "Views of Religion"
As men's prayers are a disease of the will so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
It is best to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
MARK TWAIN
More Maxims of Mark
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is "thank you," it will be enough.
MEISTER ECKHART
Woman's Day Magazine, November 13, 2007
Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
Yes, Prayer--the aspiration of the soul freed absolutely from the body--bears all forces within it, and applies them to the constant and perseverant union of the Visible and the Invisible. When you possess the faculty of praying without weariness, with love, with force, with certainty, with intelligence, your spiritualized nature will presently be invested with power. Like a rushing wind, like a thunderbolt, it cuts its way through all things and shares the power of God.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Every wish
Is like a prayer -- with God.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Aurora Leigh
Must a man get a correct philosophy of prayer before he prays? Must the child, ready to run into its father's arms, stop and study mental processes before it yields to the impulses of its love?
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in 't.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Aurora Leigh
If you just sit around praying, nothing gets done.
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
Prayer is more powerful than armies, in the end.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
Prayer was not so much a matter of asking for something as a clear statement of what was important to you; a definition of who you were, and what you lacked, what you were sorry for, what you wished to be. A peeling away to your essence.
MARY MCMULLEN
Death by Bequest
To pray without faith is to make a small fire while it is raining heavily.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The fruit
and the purpose
of prayer
is
to be oned with
and like
God
in all things.
JULIAN OF NORWICH
Meditations with Julian of Norwich
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
My God, is any hour so sweet
From blush of morn to evening star,
As that which calls me to Thy feet
The hour of prayer?
CHARLOTTE ELLIOTT
My God, Is Any Hour So Sweet
Prayer is not a device for getting our wills done through heaven, but a desire that God's will may be done on earth through us.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
If one man prays and another curses, whose voice will the Lord hear?
BEN SIRA
Sirach 34:24