Prayer Quotes
The top of this page is made of devotional writers: Bill Hybels, the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus, Shakespeare, the seventh-century bishop Isaac of Nineveh and Muhammad. The sourced counterweight is sceptical. Bertrand Russell, in 1952, says things go as we wish through knowing natural laws, not through prayer and humility, and Bierce, in 1911, defines to pray as asking that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
A weather prayer credited to General Patton is flagged misattributed. A line saying a Christian without prayer is as impossible as being alive without breathing is credited to Martin Luther King Jr. and disputed, and a “thank you” variant attributed to Meister Eckhart is disputed as well.
Hope, he called, belief
In God, — work, worship * * * therefore let us pray!
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.
Hear his sighs though mute;
Unskillful with what words to pray, let me
Interpret for him.
That’s what prayers are...it’s frightened people trying to make friends with the bully!
If you bethink yourself of any crime
Unreconcil'd as yet to heaven and grace,
Solicit for it straight.
Resort to sermons, but to prayers most:
Praying's the end of preaching.
Prayer is not conquering God's reluctance, but taking hold upon God's willingness.
Answered prayers cover the field of providential history as flowers cover western prairies.
I always pray before any of the operation. I think God help me know what to do.