Quotes about pray
page 3

“At the moment, he kinda knew how the male praying mantis felt when he
was approaching Ms. Mantis, knowing the sex was going to be great but he was going to gethis head bitten off.
Ah, well. Some things were worth losing your head.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: Mr. Perfect

Sex

“Praying's not going to help. Too late for that, Jane… I gave you a chance to have it on your terms. Now we'll do this on mine”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Chance, Help

“I can't watch TV longer than five minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

“At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Girl, Lovers, Night, Wealth

“I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, Sleep, Change, Time

“Tana. In all my long life, though there were many times I prayed for it, no one has ever saved me. No one but you.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Life, Time

“Not if we blow it up," Gale says brusquely. His intent, his full intent, becomes clear. Gale has no interest in preserving the lives of those in the Nut. No interest in caging the pray for later use.
This is one of his death traps.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Death

“Praying is talking to God. Meditating is listening.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

God

“Taylor Markham," said Raffaela, "I'm going to say a prayer for you." And although I wanted to mock her and explain I didn't believe in anything or anyone, I realised that no one had ever prayed for me before. So I let her.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“Instead of asking Him to remember you, why not pray to find comfort and value where He has taken you.”

Tracie Peterson (1959) American writer

Source: Morning's Refrain

“This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone's faith; however, if one's faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Faith

“Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging,
I may remember him!”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Love, p. 172
Collected Poems (1993)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Light, Heart, Night, Forgetting

“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

God, People

“Percy: Dad-

Poseidon: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.

Percy: I'm praying, I'm talking to you, right?

Poseidon: Oh… yes. Good point.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Variant: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.
I am praying. I'm talking to you, right?
Oh... yes. Good point. Amphitrite - incoming!
Source: The Last Olympian

“I looked into her eyes. "Mom, who do you pray to?"

I just pray, Daniel. That's all.”

James Patterson book The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Source: The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Moms

“There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Love, Learning, Appearance, Change

“Calvin: Know what I pray for?
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

28 Aug 92
The Days Are Just Packed
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

Change

“Um," Grover said. "Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"I thought you'd want to know."
"Yeah?"
"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that… well… he's hungry.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“I was never a man of great ambition
I cried too easily
I didn't have a head for science
Words often failed me
While others prayed I only moved my lips”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Science

“You are thirty minutes late."
"Yes."
"Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?"
"No."
"Why not, pray tell?"
"Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Wedding, Time

“We're [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we're just praying we won't screw up too badly.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Parent, Time

“One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

People

“We must never forget to pray, and to ask God to remember us when He is arranging things, so that we too may feel safe and have no anxiety about what is going to happen.”

Johanna Spyri book Heidi

Source: Heidi

God, Feeling, Forgetting

“The little pig began to pray
But Wolfie blew his house away.
He shouted, "Bacon, Pork, and Ham!
Oh what a lucky wolf I am!"
And though he ate the pig quite fast,
He carefully kept the tail till last.”

Roald Dahl book Revolting Rhymes

Source: Revolting Rhymes

Wolf, Housing

“God, I am trying to recover my faith. Please don't abandon me in the middle of
this adventure, I prayed, pushing my fears aside.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

God, Fear, Faith

“To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.”

William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience

The Divine Image, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Love, Peace

“You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Dead

“If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Schizophrenia", p. 101.
The Second Sin (1973)

God, Dead

“I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

Time

“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

People, Music, Idea, Thinking

“Never pray for justice, because you might get some.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Justice

“Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: A Call to Prayer

Heart

“God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

God, Sincerity

“The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: The Children of the Stage (1899), Last paragraph.
Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV

Help

“I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Way, Sleep, Country

“Jane," I said quietly.
She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer.
"Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying."
"If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Smile, Forgiveness

“… for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Thinking

“When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Love, God, Personality

“Patience is a fruit of the spirit that grows only under trial. It is useless to pray for patience. Well, actually I encourage you to pray for patience, but I'll tell you what you'll get TRIALS!”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Patience

“If time and space, as sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Love, Feeling, Time, Sun

“… And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Heart

“Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Death, Flying

“My gosh, if you’re going away, we got a million things to talk about! All the things we would’ve talked about next month, the month after! Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers!”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“I try to be a Christian…I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Quoted in interview by Merv Griffin, from Frank Brady, Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles, Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, NY (1989), page 576.

God