Famous Quotes & Sayings

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.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Before we can change anything in our life, we have to recognize that this is the way it is meant to be right now. For me, acceptance has become what I call the long sigh of the soul. It's the closed eyes in prayer, perhaps even the quiet tears. It's "all right," as in "All right, You lead, I'll follow." And it's "all right" as in "Everything is going to turn out all right." This is simply part of the journey...

Samuel Pepys

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

William Faulkner

He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.

Wilbur Smith

Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.

Warren Jeffs

And it is to rock the soul and lead the person to immorality, corruption - to forget their prayers, to forget their God. And thus the world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race, accepting their ways.

Ronald Reagan

It's said that prayer can move mountains. Well, it's certainly moved the hearts and minds of Americans in their times of trial and helped them to achieve a society that, for all its imperfections, is still the envy of the world and the last, best hope of mankind.

Ronald Reagan

I know at times we feel that perhaps in our prayers we ask too much. Or possibly we feel something isn't important enough to be bothering God with it. Maybe we should let Him decide these things.

Ronald Reagan

I am told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day; for that I am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each inaugural day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.

Saint Augustine

Do what you can and pray for what you cannot yet do.

Saint Francis de Sales

Make sickness itself a prayer.

Saint Francis de Sales

By turning your eyes on God in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with God. Begin all your prayers in the presence of God.

Saint Francis de Sales

Those who pray from the heart do not think about the prayer they are saying, but about the God to whom they pray.

Saint Augustine

Lord, thou madest us for thyself, and we can find no rest till we find rest in thee.

Saint Augustine

He that loveth little prayeth little, he that loveth much prayeth much.

Saint Augustine

Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: 'Forgive us our debts,' because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.

Saint Augustine

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

Saint Augustine

There are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in baptism, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance; yet God does not forgive sins except to the baptized

Saint Augustine

You don't love in your enemies what they are, but what you would have them become by your prayers.

Saint Augustine

If faith fails, prayer perishes.

Saint Augustine

He who labours, prays.

Saint Augustine

O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will, so that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will.

Saint Augustine

What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!

Saint Augustine

If God seems slow in responding, it is because He is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for His greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart.

William Tyndale

I know divers, and divers men know me, which love me as I do them: yet if I should pray them, when I meet them in the street openly, they would abhor me; but if I pray them where they be appointed to meet me secretly, they will hear me and accept my request.

Will Rogers

The trouble with our praying is, we just do it as a means of last resort.

Will Rogers

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Will Rogers

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.