Motivational Quotes

Prayer

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

Best Quotes about Prayer

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.

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

Seneca

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

Augustine, St.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Seneca

Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing ourselves.

Wolpe, David J.

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

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.

West, Charles C.

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

Constantine Peter Cavafy

Why is it when we talk to God, we're praying, but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?

Tomlin, Lily

10.

It is good to pray for the repair of mistakes, but praying earlier would keep us from making so many. When puzzled, go to prayer and listen.

Macaulay, J. C.

11.

When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't.

Temple, Sir William

12.

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

13.

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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

15.

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

Barr, Amelia E.

16.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrust the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

17.

If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.

Townsend, Peter

18.

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

Bernanos, Georges

19.

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

Bible

20.

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

Hammarskjold, Dag

21.

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

Lessing, Doris

22.

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

23.

If you can't pray a door open, don't pry it open.

Rader, Lyell

24.

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

25.

Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

26.

Magheburg, Mechthild of

27.

When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him.

Peale, Norman Vincent

28.

Pray to God but continue to row to the shore.

Proverb, Russian

29.

But if it were I, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before Him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. [Job 5:8-9]

Bible

30.

Indeed many things which we shall not be able to discover either by the experiment of works or by the investigations of reason we shall deserve to be taught by importunate prayer, by the revelation of divine inspiration.

Richard of Saint Victor

31.

Short prayers reach heaven.

Proverb

32.

Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man's spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.

Eddy, Mary Baker

33.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

34.

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

35.

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

Juvenal

36.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

Cohen, Leonard

37.

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

38.

Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.

Taylor, Jeremy

39.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

Franklin, Benjamin

40.

Seven days without prayer makes one weak.

41.

Don't put people down, unless it's on your prayer list.

Michalski, Stan

42.

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.

43.

When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator; and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.

Taylor, Jeremy

44.

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

45.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

Phillips Brooks

46.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

Socrates

47.

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

Proverb

48.

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

49.

When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The one way he can reach it is by prayer.

Conwell, Russel H.

50.

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

Voltaire