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.
And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
Prayer is not an asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's weakness.
All his mind is bent to holiness,
To number Ave-Maries on his beads.
Ae half the prayer wi' Phœbus grace did find
The t'other half he whistled down the wind.
Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age
Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.
Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic prayer.
For beginners prayer is like a joyous fire kindled in the heart
When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects; Heaven hath my empty words.