Motivational Quotes

Prayer

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.

- Bernanos, Georges

Best Quotes about Prayer

To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

Eckhart, Meister

Prayer is not a substitute for work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.

Buttrick, George

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

Lawrence, Brother

A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.

Lessing, Gotthold

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Gandhi, Mahatma

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart

My prayer to God is a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous! God has granted it.

Voltaire

Spiritual favors are not always to be looked for, and not always to be relied on.

Barr, Amelia E.

A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.

Cockburn, Alexander

10.

That prayer has great power which a person makes with all his might. It makes a sour heart sweet, a sad heart merry, a poor heart rich, a foolish heart wise, a timid heart brave, a sick heart well, a blind heart full of sight, a cold heart ardent. It draws down the great God into the little heart; it drives the hungry soul up into the fullness of God; it brings together two lovers, God and the soul, in a wondrous place where they speak much of love.

Magheburg, Mechthild of

11.

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

Baudelaire, Charles

12.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

Hillesum, Etty

13.

Prayer is talking with God and telling Him you love Him, conversing with God about all the things that are important in life, both large and small, and being assured that He is listening.

Strait, C. Neil

14.

It is from prayer that the spirit's victory springs.

Schillerbuch

15.

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

Saint Theresa of Jesus

16.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Seneca

17.

Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

18.

Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

19.

You should pray for a sound mind in a sound body.

Juvenal

20.

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

Lessing, Doris

21.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

Twain, Mark

22.

Ask God's blessing on your work, but don't ask him to do it for you.

Robson, Dame Flora

23.

So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Bible

24.

The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions.

Brault, Robert

25.

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

Oscar Wilde

26.

The fates are not quite obdurate; they have a grim, sardonic way of granting them who supplicate the thing they wanted yesterday.

Montgomery, Roselle Mercier

27.

Pray for what you want, but work for what you need.

28.

Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, but I will instruct you in the good and right way. [I Samuel 12:23]

Bible

29.

Pray to God but continue to row to the shore.

Proverb, Russian

30.

Ask God for what man can give, and you may get it.

Proverb, English

31.

Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.

Herbert, George

32.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Gandhi, Mahatma

33.

When we take one step toward to God, he takes seven steps toward us.

Proverb, Indian

34.

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

Milton, John

35.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

Gandhi, Mahatma

36.

Do not make prayer a monologue -- make it a conversation.

37.

There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Hugo, Victor

38.

Seven days without prayer makes one weak.

39.

If this obstacle is from Thee, Lord, I accept it; but if it is from Satan, I refuse him and all his works in the name of Calvary.

Kuhn, Isobel

40.

Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God.

Pilgrim, Peace

41.

Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.

Selden, John

42.

No one can pray well, but those who live well.

Proverb

43.

We know little of the things for which we pray.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

44.

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

Gide, Andre

45.

Most men pray for power, the strength to do things. Few people pray for love, the quality to be someone.

Foster, Robert D.

46.

We are all weak, finite, simple human beings, standing in the need of prayer. None need it so much as those who think they are strong, those who know it not, but are deluded by self-sufficiency.

Phillips, Harold C.

47.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention -- on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God -- that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

Auden, W. H.

48.

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

49.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.

Bernanos, Georges

50.

You must pray that the way be long, full of adventures and experiences.

Constantine Peter Cavafy