Famous Quotes & Sayings

Hannah More

Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.

Jack Kornfield

The Sufis have a saying: "Praise Allah, and tie your camel to a post." This brings together both parts of practice: pray, yes, but also make sure that you do what is necessary in the world.

Jack Kornfield

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

Jack Dempsey

I never went to bed in my life and I never ate a meal in my life without saying a prayer. I know my prayers have been answered thousands of times, and I know that I never said a prayer in my life without something good coming of it.

J. D. Salinger

Don't you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That's exactly what's bothering me so. Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment or peace, instead or money or prestige or game or any of those things, doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so!

J. I. Packer

I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me to drain the life out of sin and in prayer.

J. I. Packer

The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise.

J. I. Packer

Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers. If there is little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.

J. I. Packer

Confidence that one's impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them.

J. I. Packer

Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching.

J. I. Packer

We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.

J. I. Packer

Trying to describe what I do in prayer would be like telling the world how I make love to my wife.

J. I. Packer

What we do every time we pray is to confess our impotence and God's sovereignty.

J. I. Packer

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

J. I. Packer

How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.

J. I. Packer

God answers the prayer we ought to have made rather than the prayer we did make.

Kenny Perry

I say a prayer for him every night.

C. S. Lewis

When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.

C. S. Lewis

Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person.

C. S. Lewis

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you. Since but one voice is heard, it

C. S. Lewis

At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget[...]that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.

C. S. Lewis

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.

C. S. Lewis

Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones they forget.

C. S. Lewis

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.

C. S. Lewis

We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us.

Carrie Chapman Catt

The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer.

Bernard Berenson

Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her.

George Herbert

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

Georgette Heyer

Do you recall Fred Merriville?” She stared at him. “Fred Merriville? Pray, what has he to say to anything?” “The poor fellow has nothing to say: he’s dead, alas!

Jerry Falwell

If we ever opened a meeting with a prayer, silent or otherwise, we would disintegrate.

Guy Finley

Real prayer, the soul-transformi ng kind, is self-discontinu ity. It is a conscious act of self-suspension arising from the wish for something new to occur..

James E. Faust

A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being.

James Boswell

Have a sense of piety ever on your mind, and be ever mindful that this is subject to no change, but will last you as long as life and support you in death. Elevate your soul by prayer and by contemplation without mystical enthusiasm.