“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers (1876) by D. M. Bennett
Posthumous attributions
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Line 376
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers (1876) by D. M. Bennett
Posthumous attributions
Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint
Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel (2019)
Najmuddin Kubra (1145–1221) Iranian sufi poet and philosopher
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 117
“Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.”
John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher
William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist
2014-01-31
William Lane Craig: God Hears Your Super Bowl Prayers
Kate Shellnutt
Christianity Today
0009-5753
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-web-only/god-watches-big-game-william-lane-craig.html
Posed question: "What’s the value in praying for God's will to be done for the outcome of a game if God's will will be done whether we pray or not?"
“Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Quoted by Alvin Redman in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde http://books.google.com/books?id=qUjQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Prayer+must+never+be+answered+if+it+is+it+ceases+to+be+prayer+and+becomes+correspondence%22&pg=PA106#v=onepage (1952)
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet
No. 12, l. 1-4. <br class="br"> Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)