“Happy are they who freely mingle prayer and toil till God responds to the one and rewards the other.”

“No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

“Seventy thousand angels worship near the grave of Imām Husayn (a). The prayer (salah) of one of them, is equal to a thousand prayers of mankind. The reward of this prayer is for the visitors of Imām Husayn's (a) grave. The curse of God, His angels and all mankind is forever upon the killers of Imām Husayn”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

“The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

““I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.”
“One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“I won't be happy till I'm as famous as God. ”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

“Happiness is not a feeling, it is a choice. To be happy, one must choose to be happy, not respond to a circumstance that now controls your happiness.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

“This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist