Famous Quotes & Sayings

Swami Vivekananda

Him I call a Mahatma (great soul) whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a Duratma (wicked soul). Let us unite our wills in continued prayer for their good.

Sonu Nigam

My prayer is to learn new things, imbibe fresh insights. You must not take life too seriously. You must enjoy the process of living.

Roger Williams

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that Papists, Protestants, Jews, and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ships prayers or worship, nor be compelled [restrained] from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

Rupert Sheldrake

I still say the 'Lord's Prayer' every day. It covers a lot of ground in our relation to the world.

Rush Limbaugh

[Bill] Clinton and Vernon Jordan were talking about "the kitty," the pussycat every other sentence. Vernon got Monica [Lewinsky] a gig somewhere out of the White House, got her an offer for a gig somewhere. And then after Vernon left with Monica, here came Jesse Jackson to the White House for public prayer sessions so that Bill Clinton could get right with God after this mortal transgression and sin. It was the most puke-y thing.

Thomas Merton

The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.

Thomas Merton

The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.

Thomas Merton

To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.

Thomas Merton

You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer.

Thomas Merton

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God.

Thomas Merton

I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part of my life of prayer.

Thomas Merton

It's a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. . . . The fact is, though, that if you descend into the depths of your own spirit and arrive somewhere near the center of what you are, you are confronted with the inescapable truth that, at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God.

Thomas Merton

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?

Thomas Merton

When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.

Thomas Merton

Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him...who loves us, who is near to us...

Thomas Merton

The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

Thomas Merton

Prayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.

Thomas Carlyle

Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man.

Tony Evans

The bottom line is pray. If you’re tired, sick, emotionally overwhelmed—pray. If you’re on cloud nine and life seems perfect—pray. If you lack direction—pray. If you doubt that prayer makes any difference—pray. If the circumstances of your life are out of your control—pray. If the circumstances of your life seem well within you’re your control—pray even harder. Whatever you do—pray.

Tomas Transtromer

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open'.

Tom Waits

There's no prayer like desire.

Steve Camp

Prayer is the burden of revival; repentance is the breakthrough of revival; evangelism is the blessing of revival; holiness is the bounty of revival.

Ronald Reagan

I know that some believe that voluntary prayer in schools should be restricted to a moment of silence. We already have the right to remain silent - we can take our Fifth Amendment.

Ronald Reagan

Someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessory prayer." But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that - or at least say to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him.

Ronald Reagan

The First Continental Congress made its first act a prayer, the beginning of a great tradition. We have then a lesson from the founders of our land. That lesson is clear: That in the winning of freedom and in the living of life, the first step is prayer.

Sam Levenson

We should not permit prayer to be taken out of the schools; that's the only way most of us got through.

Saadi

Religion is only in the service of the people; it is not in the rosary and the prayer-carpet.

Roy H. Williams

In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?

Rosa Parks

Every day before supper and before we went to services on Sundays my grandmother would read the Bible to me, and my grandfather would pray. We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields. Prayer and the Bible, became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength

Suge Knight

When I start getting old, I'm going to start ending my prayers like, "Lord, it'd be a good day to die." I don't wanna be 130 years old with a diaper on, all my friends dead and gone. I wanna get to heaven, come get me!

Stockwell Day

It would be unthinkable in Canadian public life today for the public inauguration of our supreme political figures to be accompanied by prayer.

Stonewall Jackson

I have so fixed the habit in my own mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without a moment's asking of God's blessing. I never seal a letter without putting a word of prayer under the seal. I never take a letter from the post without a brief sending of my thoughts heavenward. I never change classes in the section room without a minute's petition on the cadets who go out and those who come in.

Sonia Choquette

Prayer is asking for guidance. Meditation is listening to it.