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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.

Random quote on Prayer

Most quoted on prayer:

So a good prayer, though often used, is still fresh and fair in the ears and eyes of Heaven.

Thomas Fuller

I ask and wish not to appear
More beauteous, rich or gay:
Lord, make me wiser every year,
And better every day.

Charles Lamb

Prayer moves the arm
Which moves the world,
And brings salvation down.

James Montgomery

When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man.

Jeremy Taylor

The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me thy grace to labour for. Amen.

Thomas More

Who is this before whose presence idols tumble to the sod?
While he cries out—"Allah Akbar! and there is no god but God!"

William Ross Wallace

I have been driven many times to my knees, by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

Abraham Lincoln

Rather let my head
Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any
Save to the God of heaven and to my king.

William Shakespeare

From compromise and things half done,
Keep me with stern and stubborn pride;
And when, at last, the fight is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.

Louis Untermeyer

Who is a worshiper? What is prayer? What is real religion? Let me answer these questions.
Good, honest, faithful work, is worship.

Robert G. Ingersoll The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!

Robert Browning Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, " My God, my God!"

William Mountford Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I think that if we would, every evening, come to our Master's feet, and tell Him where we have been, what we have done, what we have said, and what were the motives by which we have been actuated, it would have a salutary effect upon our whole conduct.

Edward Payson Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

As our blessed Lord has required us to pray that his kingdom may come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it becomes us not only to express our desires of that event by words, but to use every lawful method to spread the knowledge of his name.

William Carey An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians (1792)

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn'd the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village (1770)

…prayer is more powerful than prison bars, more enduring than legal persecution.

Massimo Introvigne

I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

Paul of Tarsus

My prayers
Are not words duly hallow'd nor my wishes
More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes
Are all I can return.

William Shakespeare Henry VIII (1613)

Let one unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light, for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
One half the human race.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in heaven will mind it;
And the finest phrase falls dead, if there is no feeling behind it.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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