c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am not, anymore, a Christian, but I am lifted and opened by any space with prayer inside it. I didn’t know why I was going, today, to stand in the long cool darkness of St. John of the Divine, but my body knew, as bodies do, what it wanted. I entered the oddly small door of the huge space, and walked without hesitating to the altar I hadn’t consciously remembered, a national memorial for those who died of AIDS, marked by banners and placards. My heart melted, all at once, and I understood why I was there. Because the black current the masseuse had touched wanted, needed, to keep flowing. I’d needed to know I could go on, but I’d also been needing to collapse. Which is what I did, some timeless tear span of minutes sitting on the naked gray stone. A woman gave me the kind of paper napkins you get with an ice cream cone. It seemed to me the most genuine of gifts, made to a stranger: the recognition of how grief moves in the body, leaving us unable to breathe, helpless, except for each other.
— Mark Doty, Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I’m with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we’re taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it’s too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn’t these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane?All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he’s loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon’s so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes.There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on. I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living’s so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.
— Mark Doty, Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
We give to God of our strength, not our weakness. But we also say: “Da lifneh mi ata omed”—Know before whom you stand. We know what we are in the face of that. We see the full picture—God and ourselves. We cannot see ourselves as more than we are because we see how much greater is the reality. But we must not lessen our value in our own eyes either, because we are a necessary part of this reality. It is no small thing that we are able to “stand” and to address that reality.It would be good if we could approach life the way we approach prayer, knowing before whom we stand.
— Ovadya ben Malka, A Damaged Mirror
This prayer in praise of Lord Vishnu be,His incarnations graced earth constantly. शान्ताकारं भुजगशयनं पद्मनाभं सुरेशं विश्वाधारं गगनसदृश्यं मेघवर्णं शुभाङ्गम्।लक्ष्मीकान्तं कमलनयनं योगिभिर्ध्यानगम्यं वन्दे विष्णु भवभयहरं सर्वलोकैकनाथम्।I bow to Vishnu, Master of Universe unquestionably,Who rests on great serpent bed, peaceful perpetually,From His navel sprouts Lotus of Creative Power surely,He the Supreme Lord of cosmos undeniably does be.- 146 -	 He supports the entire universe and all-pervading be,He dark as clouds with beautiful Lakshmi form glowingly,He the lotus-eyed, whom yogis see by meditation only,He destroyer of `Samsar’ fear – the Lord of all `loks’ be.- 147 -
— Munindra Misra, Chants of Hindu Gods and Godesses in English Rhyme
It occurred to him to say the viddui, the prayer before death. He struggled to remember it. Blessed are You, who has bestowed me with many blessings. May my death atone for all I have done . . . and may I shelter in the shadow of Your wings in the World to Come.
— Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni
Faith is the muscle of the spirit. It is strengthened through study, prayer, and meditation. As exercise builds muscle and our bodies become strong; study, prayer, and meditation builds faith and our spirits become strong.
— Gerard de Marigny, Nothing So Glorious
I just remembered a time when to warm up my spirit I prayed: movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of mutely and hidden from others reaching myself. When I prayed I achieved an emptiness of soul - and that emptiness is all I can ever have. Besides that, nothing. But the emptiness has the value and appearance of plenty. One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my - to my mystery.
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Prayer is the hardest thing. And no one congratulates you for doing it because no one knows you're doing it, and if things turn out well they likely won't thank God in any case. But I have a feeling that the hardest thing is what we all better be doing now, and that it's not only the best answer but the only one.
— Peggy Noonan, A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag: America Today
Good morning, God. Another beautiful day. I'm still here, and so is the sun. Thank you. Right, now let's get down to business.
— Cathleen Falsani, Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace
A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
It’s important that you keep asking God to show you what He wants you to do. If you don’t ask, you won’t know.
— Stormie Omartian
If you want to determine if your thoughts are from the enemy or from God, ask yourself, 'Are these thoughts I’d choose to have?
— Stormie Omartian
In the darkest times of your life, your praise to God should be the loudest. Let the enemy know you’re not afraid of the dark.
— Stormie Omartian
God wants to bless us in many ways that require faith. We must trust that He is answering our prayers even when we can’t see it.
— Stormie Omartian
The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous “talk,” or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep wills.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
God doesn't want people to do what they think is best: he wants them to do what he knows is best, and no amount of reasoning and intellectualizing will discover that.
— Henry T. Blackaby, Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God's Agenda
Allow yourself to be possessed by God by receiving Jesus, and you will never be possessed by anything else.
— Stormie Omartian
The phrase “timing is everything” is never more true than in your walk with God—HIS timing is everything.
— Stormie Omartian
Talking to God should be part of every aspect of life, in times of peace as well as in every battle.
— Stormie Omartian
We don’t want to limit what God can do in our children by trying to parent them alone—Trust God to take care of them.
— Stormie Omartian
Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all men, and all the history of mankind, in the light of God. To pray 'in spirit and in truth' enables us to enter into contact with that infinite love, that inscrutable freedom which is at work behind the complexities and the intricacies of human existence. This does not mean fabricating for ourselves pious rationalizations to explain everything that happens. It involves no surreptitious manipulation of the hard truths of life.
— Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently 'scientific' knowledge of God, but to come to know him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with his knowledge and love for us. Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We know him and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence. We have no other reason for being, except to be loved by him as our Creator and Redeemer, and to love him in return. There is no true knowledge of God that does not imply a profound grasp and an intimate personal acceptance of this profound relationship.
— Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
We must approach our meditation realizing that 'grace,' 'mercy,' and 'faith' are not permanent inalienable possessions which we gain by our efforts and retain as though by right, provided that we behave ourselves. They are CONSTANTLY RENEWED GIFTS. The life of grace in our hearts is renewed from moment to moment, directly and personally by God in his love for us.
— Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
A prayer from Shri Vishwanatha SuprabhataMorning Salutations to Shivaत्वमेव माता च पिता त्वमेव, त्वमेव बन्धुश्च सखा त्वमेव ।त्वमेव विद्या द्रविणं त्वमेव, त्वमेव सर्वं मम देव देव ॥tvameva mata cha pita tvameva,tvameva bandhush-cha sakha tvamevatvameva vidya dravinam tvamevatvameva sarvam mama deva devaYou my mother and father be,You are kin and friend to me;You my knowledge, wealth be,God of gods! You my all do be.
— Munindra Misra, Chants of Hindu Gods and Godesses in English Rhyme
During the prayers of the day, there was one less “amen”.
— Phindiwe Nkosi, Behind the Hospital
Praying is not telling God what to do. It’s trusting that God knows what to do.
— Stormie Omartian
Second: them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!""Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, "I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence.—O my poor darlings!""I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit—"and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself—that wot my opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present time.""There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the distracted Miss Pross, "and I hope she finds it answering her expectations.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
When we forgive someone, it doesn’t justify what they’ve done. It releases them into God’s hands so He can deal with them.
— Stormie Omartian
Enlightenment is not an experience at all, because the experiencer is lost. The "I", the ego is lost.Enlightenment is more like an experiencing. It is a process. It begins, but it never ends. You enter it, but you can never possess it. It is a deep merging and melting with Existence. It is a oneness. It is like a drop dropping into the Ocean.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
An orchestra of temple bells and chanting erupted suddenly like a pleasing drizzle.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
The quality of your relationships will determine the quality of your life. And this is something worth praying about.
— Stormie Omartian
People’s love for us may change, depending on what we do or don’t do to please them. But God’s does not—it’s everlasting.
— Stormie Omartian
The battle for our lives, and the lives of our children, our husbands, our friends, our families, & our nation, is waged on our knees.
— Stormie Omartian
There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are 'death' - a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance. Note how common this theme is in the Psalms. If we need help in meditation we can turn to scriptural texts that express this profound distress of man in his nothingness and his total need of God. Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light - he hears us, answers our prayer, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require - if only by giving us more faith to believe that he can and will help us in his own time. This is already a sufficient answer.
— Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
What is grace? I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella.
— Tom Junod, A profile of Mr Rogers
The battle for our lives, and the lives of our children, our husbands, our friends, our families, and our nation, is waged on our knees.
— Stormie Omartian
If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.
— Phillips Brooks
When we say to people, 'I will pray for you,' we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God's heart has become one with ours.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Whenever you can’t balance what you see with what you believe you have conflict.
— Shannon L. Alder
As white snowflakes fall quietly and thickly on a winter day, answers to prayer will settle down upon you at every step you take, even to your dying day. The story of your life will be the story of prayer and answers to prayer.
— Ole Hallesby
Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.There are no bended knees in Atheism;No supplications, no prayers;No sacrificial redemptions;No 'divine' revelations;No washing in the blood of the lamb;No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;No christs, and no saviors;No devils, no ghosts and no gods.
— Joseph Lewis, Atheism And Other Addresses
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
The dull pray
—  the geniuses are light mockers.
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
— Evelyn Underhill
Prayer is a many fingeredand kaleidoscopic thing—it foldsand unfolds inside of you. It entersthe many rooms you cannot enter.
— Cecilia Llompart
Our prayers are granted as soon as we have prayed, even though the process of fulfilling our requests has not yet begun.
— Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray
The secret prayer chamber is a bloody battleground. Here violent and decisive battles are fought out. Here the fate of souls for time and eternity is determined, in quietude and solitude.
— Ole Hallesby
I beg you, help me, in angelic charity,Pray my efforts will reflect your mastery!
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Phantom Phantasia: Poetry for the Phantom of the Opera Phan
Laughter and prayer are the two noblest habits of man
—  they mark us off from the brutes.
Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts.
— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
To try to pray is to pray. You can't fail at it. It's the only human endeavor I can think of where trying is doing. Reaching out is holding on. Joining in is letting go.
— Rick Hamlin, 10 Prayers You Can't Live Without: How to Talk to God about Anything
God's fundamental goal for believers is not to protect us from harm or suffering, to make us comfortable, or to benefit from our service. You can biblically sum up God's primary aim for your whole life in one uncomfortable word: change. Ironic as it may sound, change is the one constant that God purposes for every believer, regardless of circumstances - whether you are in ministry or in a secular job, married or single, healthy or handicapped, chronically ill or terminally diseased. God's immediate and ongoing purpose for every Christian in time and on earth is to change us, to make us like Himself, to conform us to the image of His Son.
— Layton Talbert
The person who knows Christ best is the person who will pray best.
— Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray
For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself?
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
There will be times in your life when you want to pray but feel so far from God that prayer seems impossible. The flesh will tell you that God is against you, that you have gone too far and that He is no longer interested in you. But faith defies the flesh. It contradicts Satan’s lies. It rises up against defeat, gloom, and despair and finds hope in God.
— Colin S. Smith
When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.
— Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray
In most cases, verbal prayer alone does not change anything; when actions are branded with prayer, wonderful things happen. Actions alone do not make it as well; they lead to success when guided to labour by answered prayers. Pray and work!
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
Lord, make me less like Jonah and more like Jesus. Save me from being the kind of person who cares more about my comfort, my reputation, and my success than I do about the people You are calling me to serve. Help me to keep all of my dreams on Your altar and be ready at all times to respond with faith and obedience to Your call.
— Colin S. Smith, Jonah: Navigating a God-Centered Life
May we be prepared, whatever happens, rather to undergo a hundred deaths than to turn aside from the profession of true piety, in which we know our safety to be laid up. And may we so glorify thy name as to be partakers of that glory which has been acquired for us through the blood of thine only-begotten Son. Amen.
— John Calvin
Prayers and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
— Thomas Mann
How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here?
— Jonathan Edwards, Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of “Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss:~ God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my tongue and in my tasting. God be in my lips and in my greeting.~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling. God be in my ears and in my hearing. God be in my neck and in my humbling. God be in my shoulders and in my bearing. God be in my back and in my standing. ~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving. God be in my hands and in my working. God be in my legs and in my walking. God be in my feet and in my grounding. God be in my knees and in my relating.~ God be in my gut and in my feeling. God be in my bowels and in my forgiving. God be in my loins and in my swiving. God be in my lungs and in my breathing. God be in my heart and in my loving.~ God be in my skin and in my touching. God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining. God be in my blood and in my living. God be in my bones and in my dying. God be at my end and at my reviving.
— Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.
— Ignatius of Loyola
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been born in God's thought, and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking."This is a prayer of contentment
— C.S. Lewis
My child, I am the Lord Who gives strength in the day of trouble. Come to Me when all is not well with you. Your tardiness in turning to prayer is the greatest obstacle to heavenly consolation, for before you pray earnestly to Me you first seek many comforts and take pleasure in outward things. Thus, all things are of little profit to you until you realize that I am the one Who saves those who trust in Me, and that outside of Me there is no worth-while help, or any useful counsel or lasting remedy.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion.
— Thomas Aquinas
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.[Lincoln's maxim and philosophy]
— Abraham Lincoln
A Strange Prayer:Dear Lord, I, the self searching illusion, has seen and experienced the outer world:relationships,success and failure,true friends, strangers and backbiters.I lived the different emotionsduring different seasons;I witnessed ups & downs,enjoyed love & hate,was good & bad,faced beauty & ugliness.There were times when I was brave,there were times when I was a coward.There were times when I was proactive,there were times when I was indecisive.After, flying high in the skies,and yet being a loser...After, being nothing & no one,and yet feeling content..I have understood the differencebetween lust and love,happiness and sadness,selfishness and selflessness.One often leads to another;another secretly carries the one!Yet I am lostbetween being and becoming.An inner voice admits thatmy heart is an unexplored realm,my mind is a prisoner to my wishful thinking,and the soul is unknown to me.Setting that unknown free... now, this is my heartiest wish.As Saurabh Sharma,the human being,Ialwayspray to thee, " O lord, set me free.I don't want love,I don't want to be loved;I want myself to be love itself now.That beautiful, silent and divine existence...!I want to get merged into that.Please give me wisdom and courage; Merge me into your supreme kingdom by setting my soul free.
— Saurabh Sharma
Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.
— Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas
Taking actions will fulfill your dreams and wishes, not the prayers and blessings.
— Amit Kalantri
Lincoln had entirely outgrown juvenile delight in religious argument. Talking with God seemed to the mature Lincoln more important than talking about Him.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.
— Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears
Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Wake Up At The Most Silent Time And Read The BIBLE.
— Cyc Jouzy
He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.
— Elizabeth George
Plan and plant your gifts. Pray and play your role. The harvest is assured when God manifests his anointing power in your passionate actions.
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
You can do nothing without prayer and everything with it. Anything worth worrying about is something worth praying about.
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence.
— Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives, Vol 1
[God] wants your adoration. He wants your confessions. He wants your thankfulness. He wants your requests. But most of all, He wants you and your love for Him with all your heart, strength, mind, and soul. What a joy it is to be so wanted by the Creator of everything.
— Van Harden, Life in the Purple Wedge!
For those who want to pray for me to "find God," please don't waste your prayers. If you really think God is listening to you, then please use those precious moments to ask God to care for the sick and dying, and leave me out of it. I'm happy without my faith and with living my life in the here and now. Besides, thousands before you have prayed for me to find God and it hasn't worked yet. Why would God value your request over theirs?
— David G. McAfee
Pardon me also, and deal mercifully with me, as often as I think of anything besides You in prayer. For I confess truly that I am accustomed to be very much distracted. Very often I am not where bodily I stand or sit; rather, I am where my thoughts carry me. Where my thoughts are, there am I; and frequently my thoughts are where my love is. That which naturally delights, or is by habit pleasing, comes to me quickly. Hence You Who are Truth itself, have plainly said: 'For where your treasure is, there is your heart also.' If I love heaven, I think willingly of heavenly things. If I love the world, I rejoice at the happiness of the world and grieve at its troubles. If I love the flesh, I often imagine things that are carnal. If I love the spirit, I delight in thinking of spiritual matters. For whatever I love, I am willing to speak and hear about.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say, 'Prayer happened, and I was there" more than "I prayed today". All you know is that you are being led, being guided, being loved, being used, being prayed through -- and you are no longer in the drivers seat.
— John Predmore
Prayer is actually setting out a tuning fork. All you can really do in the spiritual life is to get tuned to receive the always present message. Once you are tuned, you will receive, and it as nothing do to with worthiness or the group you belong to but only the inner resonance and a capacity for mutuality. The Sender is absolutely and always present and broadcasting; the only change is with the receiver station.
— John Predmore
He (Lincoln) was accustomed to hearing words, many of them boring, but he was not accustomed to group silence.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
Prayer is in essence rebellion—rebellion against the world in its fallenness. Prayer is the undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.
— David G. Wells
Do You Know That By Just Saying "I WANNA DIE" Or "I WISH I COULD DIE" ...God Can Answer That Prayer???You Will Be Cancelled In The Book Of Life And At Heaven You Will Be Dead, But You Will Just Be Walking On Earth Waiting To Go To Hell. Thats What Most People Call HELL OF A LIFE... A Life Of Someone Who Is Not Written In The Book Of Life.So People Stop Playing With Those Words.And If You Once Said That, PRAY TONIGHT SO THAT GOD RE-WRITES YOU IN THE BOOK OF LIFE.
— Cyc Jouzy
Now I lay me down to sleep,I pray the Lord my soul to keep,And if I die before I wake,I pray the Lord my toys will break.So none of the other kids can use 'em....Amen.
— Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
The difficulties of life do not have to be unbearable. It is the way we look at them - through faith or unbelief - that makes them seem so. We must be convinced that our Father is full of love for us and that He only permits trials to come our way for our own good.Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God. The more we know Him, the more we will desire to know Him. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love Him. We will learn to love Him equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
A worshipper perceives that he is near to God because he is awake all night worshipping God. But after worship, your prayers are for health, long life, wealth, and for the damsels and slaves of the Paradise. Ponder! Did you ever pray to God, ‘O’ God, I desire from Thee nothing but Thee’?
— Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi
In pursuit of exposing people for who we think they are, we expose ourself.
— Shannon L. Alder
When the mind, for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contracted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth.I believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before God. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer: many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you.
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
If you cannot recollect yourself continuously, do so once a day at least, in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day, what you have done and thought, for in these things perhaps you have often offended God and those about you.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Feel the energy, starting with your hands, and if you maintain the sensation of being connected to that energy as you pray, you can be more deeply immersed in your prayer. The reason is that the entire universe is composed of the energy you're feeling with your hands right now. When you maintain that feeling of connection with the universe as you pray for the great hopes and dreams cherished by your soul, you are broadcasting your prayer to the entire universe as your audience. If the whole universe is resonating with your dream and working with you to make your dream come true, wouldn't that lend great strength to you?
— Ilchi Lee, The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart
It's not that we start with beliefs and doctrine and then come up with worship practices that properly "express" these (cognitive) beliefs; rather, we begin with worship, and articulated beliefs bubble up from there. "Doctrines" are the cognitive, theoretical articulation of what we "understand" when we pray.
— James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation
When the going gets tough: the poor close their eyes, the rich open their wallets.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, Divided & Conquered
One of the greatest gifts to give our friends and others is a prayer.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Alone all day, Juniper would remember the animals and places he loved, and hold them in his own heart before the great Heart that made them. He was learning to find quietness inside himself. He was learning to pray.
— Margaret McAllister, Urchin and the Heartstone
If He strips us of all our own resources, we just might learn to lean on Him. And to start praying again.
— Lynn Austin, Pilgrimage: My Journey to a Deeper Faith in the Land Where Jesus Walked
Give us an intense distaste for things that displease You and a renewed pleasure in things that bring You honor and magnify Your truth.
— Charles R. Swindoll
You must learn to tell worry from thought and thought from prayer. Sometimes a light will go from your life, and a thought becomes a prayer til you are strong enough to stand under the weight of your own thought again.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
By the time we were knit in our mothers' wombs, our lives were like open books before Him--every sentence read, every paragraph indented, every chapter titled, every page numbered. He knew it all in advance--all the sin, all the selfishness, every weakness. Yet He chose to love us--lavishly.
— Beth Moore, Whispers of Hope: 10 Weeks of Devotional Prayer
So take a breath and find what is unsolved in your heart.Breathe in patience, breathe in love.Love yourself bountiful.And send that love out to others.When you send love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people.This love is the deepest power of prayer.
— John O. Donohue
There is no fixed formula for prayer. It has to be spontaneous, sincere, and affectionate. It is an over pouring of human spirit to God
— Kandathil Sebastian, Dolmens in the Blue Mountain
As your father keeps clean his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
I see you kneeling in church—stained only by colored windows
— John Geddes
in the name of a god who was always a ghost
— Carl-John X Veraja
All the seeming "coincidences" .... were actually God catching me in his arms.
— Shirley Corder, Strength Renewed: Meditations for Your Journey through Breast Cancer
I don’t believe in prayer, but I do believe in magic, and I want to believe in miracles.
— Laini Taylor, Night of Cake & Puppets
God is great not just because nothing is too big for Him. God is great because nothing is too small for Him, either.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
Replace worry with prayer. Make the decision to pray whenever you catch yourself worrying.
— Elizabeth George, Breaking the Worry Habit...Forever!: God's Plan for Lasting Peace of Mind
If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
— C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
It's hard to criticize someone if you are praying for them.
— Elizabeth George
If for every well-intended prayer uttered in hopes of making the world a better place, there was instead a good deed accomplished, the world might look as though those prayers had been answered.
— David G. McAfee
He had no idea that he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love, round that once dear head
— Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April
Prayer implies surrender to the will of the giver, demand preconceives a right to receive. Pray, my dear, and you shall receive.
— Zeina Glo in Beauty Cravings Prayer
Virtues are formed by prayer.Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy.Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven.
— St. Ephrem of Syria
Is not prayer the intensely personal struggle within each disciple, and among us collectively, to resist the despair and distractions that cause us to practice unbelief, to abandon or avoid the way of Jesus?
— Ched Myers
To the infinite, all finites are equal.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony.
— Ron Koertge, Coaltown Jesus
I do believe in the power of prayer. I do. And I believe in the power of human kindness.
— Leland Dirks, Angelo's Journey: A Border Collie's Quest for Home
After defending the value of prepared prayers, the author cautions against over-reliance on them. Just as David could not fight in the armor of King Saul, we are called to fight in the way God has equipped us uniquely.
— N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
Hanging laundry on a line is a very ordinary task. It is as ordinary as scraped knees and lost keys, as fixing the same simple dish for supper again, and again. Ordinary is most days, and Lord helps is if we overlook them.
— Jerusalem Jackson Greer, A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
The author chuckles at the resistance to using a prepared, written liturgy in prayer. He compares it to being unwilling to dress in any clothing we did not make ourselves, or being unwilling to drive a car we did not construct entirely by ourselves.
— N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of 'evangelical liberty'). We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from self-martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life. As soon as a Christian recognizes that he has failed in his service, that his readiness has become feeble, and that he has sinned against another's life and become guilty of another's guilt, that all his joy in God has vanished and that his capacity for prayer has quite gone, it is high time for him to launch an assault upon the flesh, and prepare for better service by fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37; 4:2: Mark 9:29; 1 Cor. 7:5).
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
We both just stood there. I let the breeze brush against my skin, the sun release the tension in my muscles. It was as close as I had felt to God in a long time. "It's like we're praying," Celeste whispered. "Only we're not saying anything.
— Nancy N. Rue, False Friends and True Strangers
When all hope is gone and your back is against the wall, ‘Pray.’ Ask God to guide you and he will take good care of you.
— Ellen J. Barrier, The Price We Must Pay for Our Father's Sins
Mother Teresa said that she couldn't imagine doing her work for more than thirty minutes without prayer. Do you and I have work that we can't imagine doing for thirty minutes without prayer?
— Gary Haugen
Haven't my past sermons taught you anyt
— Ann Rinaldi, The Letter Writer
All the men I know add that “hands that prepared it” line. They must know it’s right complimentary, an incentive to keep the women cooking.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
I also learned that prayer is not as much about getting God to act in certain ways as it is about getting to the heart of God and getting my heart to reflect His heart.
— Kurt Bjorklund, Prayers for Today: A Yearlong Journey of Contemplative Prayer, 30 Day Sampler
Cheer up, love. Have faith it will get better, and if it don’t, well darlin’ that is what your knees are for. Pray pray pray.
— Jennifer Megan Varnadore
Give me the grace to believe that you really do know what is best for me and that I do not. May I cling to Your character and rejoice in Your pursuit of me.
— Kenneth D. Boa
Make prayer a top priority rather than a last resort.
— Mary Jane Remole, Mary Jane's Cookbook: From the Heart of America
The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.
— Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
People who fit don’t seek. The seekers are those that don’t fit.
— Shannon L. Alder
Audacious faith is not passive. Neither is audacious prayer. Every aspiration you have in prayer needs an accompanying action. Otherwise you're not really praying. You're just pontificating.You do the natural. Trust God for the super.
— Steven Furtick, Sun Stand Still: What Happens When You Dare to Ask God for the Impossible
Just as ceremonial fasting was a legitimate means for getting God's attention (Mt 6:16-18; Ac 13:2-3; 14:23), the casting of lots was a legitimate means for inviting God to intercede on a matter. (Pr 18:18) It was not expected that God should intervene every time (1Sam 28:6), but the ceremonial casting of lots was an invitation for God to participate in the final decision. (page 21)
— Michael Ben Zehabe, A Commentary on Jonah
They say there is six degrees of separation between you and another person. However, when people are praying for you there are only two degrees.
— Shannon L. Alder
As I was wheeled into the operating room I pleaded withGod for one more day, one more week, one more month with her.
— Ariana Carruth, Love for Our Afflictions: Allowing Pain to Pave the Way to Peace
An ancient cornerstone of prayer is that our desire to thank God is itself God's gift. Be grateful.
— Richard Leonard, Why Bother Praying?
You will find it hard to hear from God until you let go your rights and your agenda.
— John Eldredge, Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of
All those books, all those prayers and she had got nothing from them. When everything went well for her she had been able to pray, she couldn't now. There was such urgency in her present situation that until the pressure was removed she couldn't think about God. She hadn't the patience to pray. It was a shock to her. Surely God was for these times?
— Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance
Prayer finds its source in God's holiness and it is at the same time our response to this holiness.
— John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: On the fifteth anniversary of my priestly ordination
Hope is the moonlight filtering through the trees,Hope is the silent prayer that we make in distress,Hope is the promise that we make to ourselves,Hope is the happiness that we visualize, Hope is the horizon that we reach, if we try!
— Balroop Singh
Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, but how much happens beyond that book, I can’t say. That’s agnosticism in its bleakest and most honest form. Don’t judge me, yet believe me when I tell you that years of abuse tend to wring out every ounce of one’s ability to understand and adhere to faith in standard form.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
In that moment, I welcomed back the light and let go of the fear, the feelings of unworthiness, the past, the loss, the wallowing, the grief and the anger. I let go of the illusion of control in our losses, of our afflictions.
— Ariana Carruth, Love for Our Afflictions: Allowing Pain to Pave the Way to Peace
...if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear!
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Lady Of Quality
To be a great achiever, you must first discover your main purpose of existing through feasible communication mode with your maker, the source of your destiny. This brings you a conviction to work with.
— Israelmore Ayivor, Michelangelo | Beethoven | Shakespeare: 15 Things Common to Great Achievers
At these words I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. I thought to myself, “With what tongue shall I address such majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround him. At his nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say ‘I want this, I ask for that’? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God.
— Martin Luther