Famous Quotes & Sayings

Epictetus

If thou rememberest that God standeth by to behold and visit all that thou doest; whether in the body or in the soul, thou surely wilt not err in any prayer or deed; and thou shalt have God to dwell with thee.

Emily Dickinson

Prayer is the little implement Through which Men reach Where Presence - is denied them. They fling their Speech By means of it - in God's Ear - If then He hear - This sums the Apparatus Comprised in Prayer

Emily Dickinson

That no Flake of [snow] fall on you or them - is a wish that would be a Prayer, were Emily not a Pagan.

Emily Dickinson

Prayer is the little implement through which men reach; where presence is denied them.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am weary of your quarrels, Weary of your wars and bloodshed, Weary of your prayers for vengeance, Of your wranglings and dissensions

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Prayer is innocence's friend; and willingly flieth incessant 'twist the earth and the sky, the carrier-pigeon of heaven.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What discord we should bring into the universe if our prayers were all answered. Then we should govern the world and not God. And do you think we should govern it better? It gives me only pain when I hear the long, wearisome petitions of people asking for they know not what. . . . Thanks-giving with a full heart-and the rest silence and submission to the divine will!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The prayer of Ajax was for light.

Henri Poincare

Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.

Henri Matisse

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.

Henri Nouwen

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is not one of the many things the community does. Rather, it is its very beingBut when prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experienced as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something.

Henri Nouwen

It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.

Henri Nouwen

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

Henri Nouwen

As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer.

Henri Nouwen

I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.

Henri Nouwen

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

Henri Nouwen

A prayerful life is not a life in which we say many prayers, but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.

Henri Nouwen

The crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer and action...can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.

Henri Nouwen

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

Henri Nouwen

When you are still young and not yet adult, you want to hold everything in your own hands, but if you have your hands open toward prayer, you are able to stretch out your arms and let yourself be led without knowing where. You know only the freedom which God's breath has brought you will lead to new life, even if the cross is the only sign of it you can see.

Henri Nouwen

You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer requires that we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing. As disciples, we find not some but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.

Henri Nouwen

the real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing-- that demands real effort.

Hesiod

Actions from youth, advice from the middle-aged, prayers from the aged.

Henry Paulson

I have relied on prayer for health care all of my life.

Helen Prejean

I saw the suffering and I let myself feel it… I saw the injustice and was compelled to do something about it. I changed from being a nun who only prayed for the suffering world to a woman with my sleeves rolled up, living my prayer.