Skip to content

Prayer is not used to inform, for God is omniscient; not to move compassion, for God is without passions; not to show gratitude, for God knows our hearts. May not a man, that has true notions, be a pious man, though he be silent?

— William Shenstone

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Essays on Men, Manners and Things, "On Religion", in The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone Vol. II (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1764), p. 309.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by William Shenstone

Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

It is a miserable thing to love where one hates; and yet it is not inconsistent.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

Prudent men should lock up their motives, giving only their intimates a key.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

My banks they are furnish’d with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.

Works, Vol. I: Verse (1764)

Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice: whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

A fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

For seldom shall she hear a tale
So sad, so tender, yet so true.

Works, Vol. I: Verse (1764)

There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

All William Shenstone quotes →

Topics

Prayer

More quotes by William Shenstone

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

Oft has good-nature been the fool's defence,
And honest meaning gilded want of sense.

Verses to a Lady (1736)

Love can be founded upon nature only; or the appearance of it.

Essays on Men and Manners (1764)

All William Shenstone quotes →

You may also like

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: William Shenstone (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.