Famous Quotes & Sayings

Voltaire

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

William Feather

Many of our prayers were not answered, and for this we are now grateful.

William Ralph Inge

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.

William Ralph Inge

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

William Carey

One of the first, and most important of those duties which are incumbent upon us, is fervent and united prayer.

William Carey

I am very defective in all duties... In prayer I wander and am formal... I soon tire; devotion languishes; and I do not walk with God.

William Carey

If you want the Kingdom speeded, go out and speed it yourselves. Only obedience rationalizes prayer. Only Missions can redeem your intercessions from insincerity.

William Carey

The most glorious works of grace that have ever took place, have been in answer to prayer; and it is in this way, we have the greatest reason to suppose, that the glorious out-pouring of the Spirit, which we expect at last, will be bestowed.

William Carey

Prayer - secret, fervent, believing prayer - lies at the root of all personal godliness.

William Booth

You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame.

William Butler Yeats

May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Prayer is intended to increase the devotion of the individual, but if the individual himself prays he requires no formula; he pours himself forth much more naturally in self-chosen and connected thoughts before God, and scarcely requires words at all. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.

Yitzhak Rabin

But, more than anything, in the more than three years of this Government's existence, the Israeli people has proven that it is possible to make peace, that peace opens the door to a better economy and society; that peace is not just a prayer. Peace is first of all in our prayers, but it is also the aspiration of the Jewish people, a genuine aspiration for peace.

Winona LaDuke

Across the continent, on the shores of small tributaries, in the shadows of sacred mountains, on the vast expanse of the prairies, or in the safety of the woods, prayers are being repeated, as they have for thousands of years, and common people with uncommon courage and the whispers of their ancestors in their ears continue their struggles to protect the land and water and trees on which their very existence is based. And like small tributaries joining together to form a mighty river, their force and power grows.

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.

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.