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We lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often and long alone with God. No otherwise can the great central idea of God enter into a man's life, and dwell there supreme.

— Austin Phelps Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1883)

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Prayer

More quotes by Austin Phelps

God, save us from ourselves! We carry within us the elements of hell if we but choose to make them such. Ahaz, Judas, Nero, Borgia, Herod, all were once prattling infants in happy mother's arms.

Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1883)

Have you never observed how free the Lord's Prayer is of any material that can tempt to subtle self-inspection in the art of devotion? It is full of an outflowing of thought and of emotion toward great objects of desire, great necessities, and great perils.

Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1883)

The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.

Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1883)

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When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.

Plato

To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

Claude Debussy Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933)

"O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."

John F. Kennedy

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Austin Phelps (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.