Famous Quotes & Sayings

William Wilberforce

The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint

William Wilberforce

I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.

I'd just like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers, and I think that's it.

Richard Paul Evans

As a boy I heard this story in church. A man was patching a pitched roof of a tall building when he began sliding off. As he neared the edge of the roof he prayed, "Save me, Lord, and I'll go to church every Sunday, I'll give up drinking, I'll be the best man this city has ever known." As he finished his prayer, a nail snagged onto his overalls and saved him. The man looked up to the sky and shouted, "Never mind, God. I took care of it myself." How true of us.

Richard J. Needham

God punishes us mildly by ignoring our prayers and severely by answering them.

Richard Baxter

I remember myself, that when I was young, I had sometime the company of one ancient godly minister, who was of weaker parts than many others, but yet did profit me more than most; because he would never in prayer or conference speak of God, or the life to come, but with such marvelous seriousness and reverence, as if he had seen the majesty and glory which he talked of.

Richard Baxter

Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.

Richard Baxter

Prayer is the breath of the new creature.

Saint Augustine

Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer

Tryon Edwards

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. True prayer always receives what it asks, or something better.

Tryon Edwards

Whoever in prayer can say, 'Our Father', acknowledges and should feel the brotherhood of the whole race of mankind.

Truman Capote

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

Woody Harrelson

A moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers.

William Wordsworth

"What is good for a bootless bene?" With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When prayer is of no avail?

William Wordsworth

Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him; it was blessedness and love!

William Wordsworth

Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

William Saroyan

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

William McKinley

Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of the earth

William James

We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.

William James

But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.

William James

The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.

William James

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Whitley Strieber

Every time someone ends a prayer in the Western world they say Amen - that is the name of an Egyptian god associated with completion. So we're still praying to their gods.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

writing is the most personal form of prayer.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.

Samuel Pepys

I did this night promise my wife never to go to bed without calling upon God, upon my knees, in prayer.

Rich Lowry

A flag doesn't cause someone to sit in a prayer meeting for an hour, and then stand up and shoot people.

Rob Bell

You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc.

Richard Powers

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

Richard Rohr

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

Richard Rohr

Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.

Tupac Shakur

I put the pistol by my head, and say a prayer. I see visions of me dead, Lord are you there?

Vance Havner

If you can't pray as you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean.