“But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.”
Lecture XIX, "Other Characteristics"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
"All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine."
Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)
“Most prayers have nothing in common with petitions.”
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
Context: When we speak of prayer or of the results of prayer we always imply only one kind of prayer — petition, or we think that petition can be united with all other kinds of prayers.… Most prayers have nothing in common with petitions. I speak of ancient prayers; many of them are much older than Christianity. These prayers are, so to speak, recapitulations; by repeating them aloud or to himself a man endeavors to experience what is in them, their whole content, with his mind and his feeling.
“They who have steeped their souls in prayer
Can every anguish calmly bear.”
The Sayings of Rabia. iv.
As quoted in John Clute, "Scores" http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100118/clute-c.shtml, in Strange Horizons (18 January 2010)
Galileo's Dream (2009)
"The Holy Dimension", p. 341
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)