Quotes about pray (1087 quotes, page 7)

“[were I] not detained here by age and by the gout which renders me useless, I should go there to enjoy with my own eyes and admire the perfection of such worthy works.... [I pray] look upon all the marvels of your hand.... before I close my eyes forever.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to Francois Duquesnoy, 1639-1640 ; as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 180
The sculptor Francois Duquesnoy, then living drawing heightened with in Rome, had sent him models of work done for a tomb monument, Windsor Castle, Rubens praised them with his usual expansive generosity. Rubens had begun to resign himself to his end, but could write still some letters
1625 - 1640

Age , Perfection

“We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the one hand, turn their Councils from every act which would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the trust committed to them: and on the other, guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his blessing, may redound to their own praise, and may establish more firmly the liberties, the prosperity and the happiness of the Commonwealth.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

§ 15
1780s, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)

Effort , Universe , Parting , Happiness

“Our prayers can be more than empty wishes, vain hopes or feeble aspirations – but only when they are prayed from faith-filled hearts.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Faith , Hope , Heart

“Women of America! You can give and serve and pray. You can give self-denyingly. You can serve lovingly. You can pray conqueringly. The best example of self-denying liberality in the Bible is recorded of woman. The best example of loving service in the Bible is recorded of woman. The best example of conquering prayer in the Bible is recorded of woman. It was no great gift, no great service, no great prayer. The gift was a widow's mite. The service was the anointing of Jesus with a box of ointment. The prayer was a mother's prayer for a daughter possessed with a devil. But the gift and service and prayer were in self-denial and love and faith. And so in the sight of God they were of great price.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 617.

Love , Women , God , Faith

“Open your grief-stricken heart to the Lord. Weep and sincerely pray, 'O Lord, draw me towards You; give me peace of mind.' By doing so constantly you, will gradually attain peace of mind.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Peace , Heart , Drawing , Sincerity

“Pray God for guidance, man. It's thirty-odd years since I sold the last copy of Orvar-Odds saga. The country stands on an entirely different cultural footing nowadays. I can recommend the story of King Solomon's Mines there, all about the hero of Umslopogaas, in his own way a great man, and in my opinion no whit inferior to Orvar-Oddur.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

God , Way , Country

“Let us pray…Oh, uh, please don't feel like you can't participate if you're not Christian, because this is a prayer for all faiths…”

Bo Burnham (1990) American comedian, musician, and actor

Words, Words, Words (2010)

Faith , Feeling

“I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 16, sentences 2,3.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Life , Way , Feeling , Passion

“Furthermore, it must be mentioned that there are not petitional or intercessory prayers in Buddhism. However much we may pray to the Buddha we cannot be saved. The Buddha does not grant favors to those who pray to Him. Instead of petitional prayers there is meditation that leads to self-control, purification and enlightenment. Meditation is neither a silent reverie nor keeping the mind blank. It is an active striving. It serves as a tonic both to the heart and the mind. The Buddha not only speaks of the futility of offering prayers but also disparages a slave mentality. A Buddhist should not pray to be saved, but should rely on himself and win his freedom.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Freedom , Heart

“I like it, murder, because this is courage. It is anti-bourgeois. Murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming 'remords de conscience', one prays, one opens the sky, and the angels say, 'Good morning!”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Dali interviewed by Victor Bockris, 1974

Angels , Courage

“Is it wrong to pray for God to make me more successful so that I can be more humble?”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

If "knowledge puffs up," then we professors are in ever-present danger of having egos resembling threatened blow fish.
"Pascal's Prayer,", Robert J. Marks II, 2006-10-06, 2010-04-22 http://www.okstatefcfs.org/ministryminutes/10_9_2006Marks.htm,

God , Success

“The other day, there was a man outside, beckoning to what I though was Has Wounds. … He came back with an older man … he was crying and sobbing, and — he's Has Wounds' owner! … I told him about what I had done … He said that he's been praying for her all of this time too. He'd been crying, he'd been singing — and he thought he was alone in alll this. The nights when I'd wondered … where she was, corresponded with days where he'd wondered where she'd gone. … And this man had cared for her for 16 years! … I said how I had named her, and he said that in 16 years he had never come up with a name for her, because nothing seemed to suit her, and he was amazed to reveal that that was very much her, and he's going to call her that from now on! He begged to repay me somehow … I said listen, the best thing you can do is what you have already done — love her, take care of her, be her owner! …”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Has wounds but still lives (2010)

Love , Singing , Time , Cry

“You are doing an excellent thing, one which will be wholesome for you, if, as you write me, you are persisting in your effort to attain sound understanding; it is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol's ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. A god is near you, with you, and in you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: there sits a holy spirit within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our a guardian.”
Facis rem optimam et tibi salutarem, si, ut scribis, perseveras ire ad bonam mentem, quam stultum est optare, cum possis a te impetrare. Non sunt ad caelum elevandae inarms nee exorandus aedituus, ut nos ad aurem simulacri, quasi magis exaudiri possimus, admittat; Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili: sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos...

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLI: On the god within us

God , Way , Understanding , Effort

“Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot —
I think a Sufi pipkin-waxing hot —
"All this of Pot and Potter — Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Thinking

“Answering the question "How do you explain growth of the part of Russians indifferent to politics?", Pavlovsky said: Throughout the last hundred years Russia several times all without exceptions lived with great political projects. Every time livestock of the nation steadily diminished after that, politized condition is always temporary for a person, not quite normal condition. Nowadays we are passing through period of silence, outer peace (most probably, not long) and reconciliation with quiet not rich existence without great risky perspectives. Pray to drag this time out for 4-8 years more.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Peace , Question , Silence , Time

“Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Letter (21 April 1850).
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

Boy , Sea

“In Selma as elsewhere we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

Fear , Peace

“In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote c. 1870; cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 22
taken from Millet's youth-memories, about the years he lived as an boy close to the wild coast of Normandy, written down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier
1870 - 1875

Men , People , Fear , Home

“There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people and that's the only way that our campaign could be doing what it's doing.And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across who are praying that a little will become much and it has, and it defies all explanation. It has confounded the pundits, and I'm enjoying every minute of their trying to figure it out. And until they look at it from a just experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. And that's probably just as well. That's honestly why its happening.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Liberty University convocation, , quoted in * 2007-12-06
Huckabee: God Wants Me to Be President
James Joyner
Outside the Beltway
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/huckabee_god_wants_me_to_be_president/
asked what he attributed his surge in the polls to

People , Way , Boy , Fish

“I sincerely pray for my country and for all of its citizens, even those who have made much effort to harass my family and I.”

Loujain al-Hathloul (1989) Saudi Arabian activist

A Clarification (March 24, 2016)

Family , Effort , Sincerity , Country

“They were crying, begging for mercy and praying for their dying children. It’s one thing to think about abortion in the abstract, but when you see a baby at seven-months gestation, it’s a baby — truly one of us. It was as if the pit of hell opened up before me. All of the rationalizations were swept away by the brute facts — the humanity of these babies and their killing. I instantly realized that an abortion was the taking of a human life, and I became pro-life.”

Steven W. Mosher (1948) American social scientist

Steve Mosher: A Vision of 'Hell' Brought Him to the Church http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/steve-mosher-a-vision-of-hell-brought-me-to-the-church (January 20, 2012)

Life , Children , Hell , Thinking

“In another's eyes I'm afraid that I can't see
This picture perfect portrait that they paint of me.
They don't realize and I pray they never do,
'Cause every time I look I'm seein' you
In another's eyes.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

In Another's Eyes, written by Bobby Wood, John Peppard, and G. Brooks, duet with Trisha Yearwood.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Time , Painting , Perfection

“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

Loneliness

“It is best therefore to surrender all desires at the feet of God. He will do whatever is best for us. But one may pray for devotion and detachment. These cannot be classed as desires.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 349]

God

“To his complete astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second.
Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.”

Richard Matheson book I Am Legend

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 12

God , Dogs

“The time has come for me to say good-bye-or better, 'arrivederci!'. World Youth Day 2011 will take place in Madrid, Spain. Until then, let us continue to pray for one another, and let us joyfully bear witness to Christ before the world.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Angelus following the Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Youth , World , Time , Christ

“In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"The Meaning of Freedom", Sol Feinstone Lecture at the United States Military Academy (15 November 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 78

War , Change

““The devils,” Billiard-Fannon wept, struggling upward. “They’re all about the ship! They want to break in! A cursed vessel, a haunted vessel… we must pray to God! Let us pray!”
“I pray you to shut up,” grunted Capot.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 16, “Sentence” (p. 151)

God

“Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Inauguration homily, April 24, 2005
2005

Fear

“The time that I've taken
I pray is not wasted
Have I already tasted
My piece of one sweet love”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"One Sweet Love"
Lyrics, Careful Confessions (2004)

Love , Time

“True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it because man's words, for good or ill, can now so easily reach the millions.
Very often the words are good and even inspiring, the embodiment of our hopes and our prayers for peace. But while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way.
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction. The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states. Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

The Four Faces of Peace (1957)

Life , Peace , Hope , Way

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

"Suicide in the Trenches"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Youth , Home , Hell , Laughter

“When I pray, I'm not just telling God my problems, but rather I'm turning over my biggest concerns to him. It's only when I've put them in his capable hands that I can go about my day in his strength and freedom.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Problem , Freedom

“He would have liked to say goodbye,
Shake hands with many friends.
In Highgate now his finger-bones
Stick through his finger-ends.You, God, who treat him thus and thus,
Say, "Save his soul and pray."
You ask me to believe You and
I only see decay.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"On a Portrait of a Deaf Man" line 25, from Old Lights for New Chancels.
Poetry

God , Soul

“Thank you for praying for me, and wishing me well, and all the support, because I need it a lot. And inside me there is a warrior, but right now, I am a 'Golden Girl'… But I wanted to let you guys know that I have not died, and I am here, and I am going to fight with all I have got to stay — and to help. And I have never been in this bad a condition, but I am determined.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"My Nightgown is Blue and I am too!" (20 March 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXmSYfJctfw

Guy , Girl , Support , Help

“One suffers as a result of one's own actions. So, instead of blaming others for such sufferings, one should pray to the Lord and depending entirely on His grace, try to bear them patiently and with forbearance under all circumstances.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Saradeshananda, The Holy Mother's Reminiscences, Vedanta Kesari, 1976-1981]

Suffering , Dependency

“Behold, most beloved reader, thus true faith or true knowledge begets love, and love begets obedience to the commandments of God. Therefore Christ Jesus says, "He that believeth on him is not condemned." Again at another place, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life," Jn. 5:24. For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonished and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.246

Love , Life , Death , God

“Live as with God; and, whatever be your calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in it.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

God

“Anyone who has read Yeats’s wonderful Autobiography will remember his Sligo—shabby, shadowed, half country and half sea, full of confused romance, superstition, poverty, eccentricity, unrecognized anachronism, passion and ignorance and the little boy’s misery. Yeats was treated well but was bitterly unhappy; he prayed that he would die, and used often to say to himself: “When you are grown up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Development of Yeats’s Sense of Reality”, p. 89
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

People , Boy , Passion , Reading

“Worship is the earthly act by which we most distinctly recognize our personal immortality; men who think that they will be extinct a few years hence do not pray. In worship we spread out our insignificant life, which yet is the work of the Creator's hands, and the purchase of the Redeemer's blood, before the Eternal and All-Merciful, that we may learn the manners of a higher sphere, and fit ourselves for companionship with saints and angels, and for the everlasting sight of the face of God.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 457.

Life , Men , God , Angels

“Giraldus mingles in the crowd, catches its accents, is borne along by its changing passions, and thus becomes a very mirror of that fighting, chaffering, praying age.”

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Sir John E Lloyd A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (1912) Vol. 1, p. 564.
Criticism

Age , Passion , Change , Fight

“Keep on praying because the Father does listen. He loves our company, he wants us to endure in prayerfulness and he is eager to do whatever is best for us.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Love

“People complain about their griefs and sorrows and how they pray to God but find no relief from pain. But grief itself is a gift from God. It is the symbol of His compassion.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 220-221]

God , Pain , People

“Class, conservatives insist, is not really about money or birth or even occupation. It is primarily a matter of authenticity, that most valuable cultural commodity. Class is about what one drives and where one shops and how one prays, and only secondarily about the work one does or the income one makes. What makes one a member of the noble proletariat is not work per se, but unpretentiousness, humility, and the rest of the qualities that our punditry claims to spy in the red states that voted for George W. Bush. The nation’s producers don’t care about unemployment or a dead-end life or a boss who makes five hundred times as much as they do. No. In red land both workers and their bosses are supposed to be united in disgust with those affected college boys at the next table, prattling on about French cheese and villas in Tuscany and the big ideas for running things that they read in books.This sounds like a complicated maneuver, but it should be quite familiar after all these years. We see it in its most ordinary, run-of-the-mill variety every time we hear a conservative pundit or politician deplore "class warfare"”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

meaning any talk about the failures of free-market capitalism — and then, seconds later, hear them rail against the "media elite" or the haughty, Volvo driving "eastern establishment."
Part II: The Fury Which Passeth All Understanding, Chapter Six: Persecuted, Powerless, and Blind (pp. 113-114).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Life , Money , Boy , Idea

“I know that the families of our military are praying that all those who serve will return safely and soon. Millions of Americans are praying with you for the safety of your loved ones and for the protection of the innocent. For your sacrifice, you have the gratitude and respect of the American people. And you can know that our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Invasion of Iraq (March 2003)

Love , People , Family , Home

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“I'm spending nights just dreaming / And playing the music loud / They're banging on the ceiling / They're praying that I'll soon be out.”

Kim Wilde (1960) English pop singer

Fit in
Teases and Dares (1984)

Dreams , Music , Night

“People who pray stand receptive before the world. They no longer grab but caress, they no longer bite but kiss, they no longer examine but admire.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Encounters with Merton

People , World , Kiss

“Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age
Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

"Beauty in This Iron Age" in Starlanes #11 (Fall 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Age , Beauty

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life , God , Way , Reality

“If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you're in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself. Every artist ought to pray that he may not be "a success". If he's a failure he stands a good chance of concentrating upon the best work of which he's capable.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Remark to Clifford Bax, reported in Imogen Holst Gustav Holst: A Biography (1969) p. 81.

Failure , Chance , Success

“I woke up in the middle of the night with the sound of heavy explosion. It was deep at night. I do not remember what time it was. I just remember the sound was so heavy and so very shocking. Everything in my room was shaking -- my heart, my windows, my bed, everything. I looked out the windows and I saw a full half-circle of explosion. I thought it was just like the movies, but the movies had not conveyed them in the powerful image that I was seeing full of bright red and orange and gray, and a full circle of explosion. And I kept on staring at it until it disappeared. I went back to my bed, and I prayed, and I secretly thanked God that that missile did not land on my family's home, that it did not kill my family that night. Thirty years have passed, and I still feel guilty about that prayer, for the next day, I learned that that missile landed on my brother's friend's home and killed him and his father, but did not kill his mother or his sister. His mother showed up the next week at my brother's classroom and begged seven-year-old kids to share with her any picture they may have of her son, for she had lost everything.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

God , Family , Feeling , Home

“One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

From The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (1999, with William H. Willimon). Page: 89

Way , Singing

“Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? … Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God , Secret , Family , History

“Yet, some explorers do not return. And the loss settles unfairly on a few. The families here today shared in the courage of those they loved. But now they must face life and grief without them. The sorrow is lonely; but you are not alone. In time, you will find comfort and the grace to see you through. And in God's own time, we can pray that the day of your reunion will come.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Love , Life , God , Family

“You know, you almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore. Ellen [Degeneres], and all the rest. I love them, pray for their souls, but they're immoral. And the Hollywood scene — five and eight and 10 marriages — not something to be emulated.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Televised sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (25 June 2006), as quoted in "Falwell on the "moral pervert[s]" in Hollywood: "[Y]ou almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore" at Media Matters for America (27 June 2006)

Love , Marriage , Soul

“She prays to God most every night
And though she swears he doesn't listen there's a little hope in her he might.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Grey Street
Busted Stuff (2002)

God , Hope , Night

“I'm standing in line. I got a first class ticket. And I get up to the front of the line and there isn't anybody there. It's just a kiosk with a computer terminal. And I'm not good at computers. And I don't wanna touch this thing, 'cause it's got grease and dirt and what I only pray to Jesus is meringue.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

Behavioral Problems

“I said, “When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.””

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part I “Yellow City”, Chapter 5 (p. 156)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“Nobody can tell us Christians how to dress, how to live or how to pray.”

Michel Sabbah (1933) Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem

Christmas under Hamas rule, BBC News, 22 December 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7154134.stm, Quote from a statement made during his visit to Gaza City on possible implementation of Islamic fundamentalist internal policies like mandatory hijab and other measures

“I am Emperor Ronald Reagan
Born again with fascist cravings
Still, you made me president

Human rights will soon go 'way
I am now your Shah today
Now I command all of you
Now you're going to pray in school
I'll make sure they're Christian too
…
You'll go quitely to boot camp
They'll shoot you dead, make you a man
Don't you worry, it's for a cause
Feeding global corporations' claws

Die on our brand new poison gas
El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan
And all the friends of President Reagan”

Jello Biafra (1958) singer and activist

We've Got a Bigger Problem Now, In God We Trust, Inc. (1981).

Money , School , Way , Dead

“We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.”
Saepe aliud volumus, aliud optamus, et verum ne dis quidem dicimus.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCV: On the usefulness of basic principles, Line 2.

God , Truth

“On John Edwards, U. S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.'”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line.
" It's the war, stupid http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/steyn030104.asp", 1 March 2004

Hope , Girl , Boy , Laughter

“'A'isha reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "When one of you dozes off while he is praying, he should go and lie down until he is no longer sleepy. If someone prays when he is drowsy, he may not know whether he is asking for forgiveness or asking for something bad for himself."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 147
Sunni Hadith

Lie , Peace , Forgiveness

“A Christian is a believer in Jesus. He believes that if he only throws his own lost and sinful soul on the Redeemer, there is in His sacrifice sufficient merit to cancel all his guilt, and in His heart sufficient love to undertake the keeping of his soul for all eternity. He believes that Jesus is a Saviour. He believes that His heart is set on His people's holiness, and that it is only by making them new creatures, pure-minded, kind-hearted, unselfish, devout, that He can fit them for a home and a life like His own, that He can fit them for the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. And believing all this he prays and labors after holiness.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 103.

Love , Life , People , Home

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger , God , Faith , Food

“Yes, I prayed. Why not? The advantage of being an agnostic over being an atheist is that I always had the possibility of being wrong, and could still entertain the hope that the universe was better organized than it appeared to be.”

John C. Wright book Orphans of Chaos

Source: Orphans of Chaos (2005), Chapter 21, “The Seventh Day” Section 2 (p. 277)

Hope , Universe , Appearance

“One of the men in the boat—I could not remember which character—had moved through all of the circles of theological supposition: praying, believing that God was a merciful Deity who sat up nights worrying about him, then believing that God was a cruel bastard, and finally deciding that no one was listening.”

Dan Simmons book Endymion

Source: Endymion (1996), Chapter 34 (p. 344)

Men , God , Night

“I always pray before fighting. I pray in the corner, in the hotel room – maybe two hours before I go to the arena. It takes me far – I see a big difference when you pray and go into a fight; you have more strength and also you know God’s helping you.”

Amir Khan (boxer) (1986) British boxer

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM9mW7gglI&feature=channel (Aik Din Geo Kay Sath), GEO News. (September 2009)

God , Help , Fight

“Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them and the jailer said as he put down the pipkin: ‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate-as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.’ … John said, ‘Thank heavens! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense. You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.’ ‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?’ ‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 49
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Secret , Food , Dreams , Fools

“So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts.
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?
Boy, you'd best pray that I bleed real soon --
How's that thought for you?”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Silent All These Years".
Songs

Girl , Boy , Thinking

“In the old days, the navigators used magic to make themselves strong, but now, nothing; they just pray. Before they leave and at sea, they pray. But I, I make myself strong by thinking—just by thinking! I make myself strong because I despise cowardice. Too many men are afraid of the sea. But I am a navigator.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

The Last Navigator (1987)

Men , Thinking , Strong , Sea

“We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.”

Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer

"Press Clips", The Village Voice (21 January 1980).

God , People , World , Art

“… you should never take medicine to relieve pain. You should never consult a doctor or go to a hospital for treatment, because you would be interfering with the work of God in your life. If Cancer is the chastening tool of God, then doctors who are fighting cancer are fighting against the work of God. If a preacher or a Christian believes the sickness is a means of chastening, then he should never pray for relief from the sickness, but rather pray that the cancer will continue to grow until the chastening is completed.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

More Than Just Comfort: An Answer to Cancer (c. 1979)

Life , God , Pain , Fight

“In the ancient cultural places of the world there was a temple, a church or a cathedral in its center. From there came the order of life. In every modern big city there is a bank building in its center. In my »Pied Piper« I have tried to depict this as a kind of demon cult, where money is something to be prayed to like something sacred. It's even being expressed there in words that it is »God«. It performs miracles, because the multiplication of money itself is yet a miracle. After all, the dealings there are with a miraculous multiplication of money. It has the character of everlastingness. But if there is anything that is just a purely man-made thing, then it's money.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Ende no yuigon" ["Ende's Last Message"] (May 1999), broadcast of an interview of February 1994, as quoted in "Michael Ende's Last Words to the Japanese" http://www.equilibrismus.de/en/topics/general/rm-michael_ende.htm at Equilibrism (Equilibrismus.de)

Life , Money , God , World

“Mr. Speaker, you have no idea how great this feels to be great back here at work in people’s House. As you can imagine, these last 3 1/2 months have been pretty challenging times for me and my family. But, if you look at the outpouring of love — my gosh Jennifer and I have been overwhelmed with the outpouring — It’s given us the strength to get through all of this. And get to this point today; it starts with God. When I was laying out on that ball field, the first thing I did once I was down and couldn’t move anymore, I started to pray. And tell you, it gave me an unbelievable sense of calm knowing at that point it’s in God’s hands. I prayed for specific things, and I’ll tell you, pretty much every one of those prayers was answered. They were some pretty challenging prayers I was putting in God’s hands, but he really did deliver for me and my family. And it just gives you that renewed faith and understanding that the power of prayer is something you cannot under estimate. So I’m a living example that miracles really do happen.”

Steve Scalise (1965) American politician

Love , God , People , Family

“Scientists and business leaders who care about social justice should join forces with environmental and religious organizations to give political clout to ethics. Science and religion should work together to abolish the gross inequalities that prevail in the modern world. That is my vision, and it is the same vision that inspired Francis Bacon four hundred years ago, when he prayed that through science God would "endow the human family with new mercies."”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

God , World , Family , Religion

“Whenever I see a pretty woman, I have to pray for grace.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–1844) American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement

Quoted by Wilhelm Wyl, Joseph Smith, the Prophet, His Family and His Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing, 1886), 55
Attributed to Joseph Smith, Jr.

“"Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!"
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay book Lays of Ancient Rome

Horatius, st. 59
Lays of Ancient Rome (1842)

Life

“I'm doing this for the sake of this country [Malaysia], because this nation belongs to us. We were born here and we will die here. If I were to die fighting, let it be… but I can't just stand and do nothing, when I see the things that are happening in our nation. So right now I have to give a message to my brethren: The people who have been living in unity all this time. Don't believe the propaganda of today's government. They go around to kampungs to spread all sorts of propaganda, that whatever they implement must be obeyed. Think for yourself - are they really doing what is right? Don't just follow without question, use your wisdom and think. What is happening is, they take credit for all that is good, their opponents are responsible for all bad things, and they [government he is referring to as "spreading propaganda"] cover up all the bad things they do and point the finger of blame on the people who stand up to them. So this is the situation today, the press has no voice. When a newspaper reports something, the issue is covered up. This just goes to show that the people who stand up to them have no voice at all. This government [todays government] controls everything. But the ones who really hold power in this nation, you, the ordinary rakyat (Dewan Rakyat). So if we don't seek what is true, or use wisdom to discern a matter, this nation will crumble. If only the rakyat could understand all of this, at the end of the day, the rakyat has the right to vote, and the rakyat itself can elect anyone to be the leader here, ordinary rakyat, think for yourselves, because that "magic lamp" is in the hands of the original rakyat. So, ordinary rakyat with power in their hands, use your wisdom, protect your rights, in order to preserve our beloved nation, Malaysia, because it's not only this present generation that depend on our nation, that depends on fairness in our nation, but even our next generation to come all depend on the governance of our nation. If this Merdeka is to have any meaning at all, may they be well until the end of time. This is our responsibility. I pray that all will be well.”

Tunku Abdul Rahman (1903–1990) Malaysian politician

"Tunku Abdul Rahman last speech" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdoxoum02BA, interview taken on National Day, 1988, Malaysia.

Wisdom , People , Understanding , Question

“We’re at an historic, but fragile, moment. The pro-life voters who were critical to Trump’s victory cannot now sit back. Now is the time to get more engaged than ever before. The abortion lobby is already bouncing back from their electoral defeat and preparing to fight because this is a do-or-die moment for them. Are we treating it the same way? We will need pro-life Americans to stand up and speak out louder than they ever have, call their members of Congress, pray, donate and demand that the pro-life agenda is carried out.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser President of the Susan B. Anthony List

Life , Way , Time , Victory

“The same church must, in my opinion, also respect that the one whose name is absent from the same declaration out of embarrassment, although he and he alone led Muslims to pray to this one God, so that once again through him, Muhammad, the prophet, this God "has spoken to mankind."”

Hans Küng (1928) Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author

World Religions 129

God

“It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1963)

“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy […] articles attacking birth control, divorce, mixed marriages, Darwin and secular education were her favourite reading. The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others […] The extermination of Protestantism, rather than spiritual perfection, was the boon she prayed for.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

Source: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), Ch. 1

Marriage , War , Education , Feeling

“The modern Christian does not retire into a cell to pray, but goes about doing good. He thus avoids the risk of narrowness, which attends the man who desires only to do the " nearest duty." But there is a danger here also,— that of shallowness. The man who is always giving, never receiving; always helping others, and never feeding his own soul, is in danger of becoming empty.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 566.

Soul , Help

“No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. … I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray—ah, yes, for there are times when all pray—for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast (22 June 1941) on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1120
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Love , Children , Home , Communication

“Work, and thou wilt bless the day
Ere the toil be done;
They that work not, can not pray,
Can not feel the sun.
God is living, working still,
All things work and move;
Work, or lose the power to will,
Lose the power to love.”

John Sullivan Dwight (1813–1893) American minister

Working.

Love , God , Feeling , Sun

“Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.”

Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) French actress

As quoted in What Great Men Think of Religion (1945) by Ira D Cardiff

“During the entire period of my banishment and trial, I wanted to tell Piedmont and Bennington that what was happening between us was not confined to Beaufort, South Carolina. I wanted to tell them about the river that was rising quickly, flooding the marshes and threatening the dry land. I wanted them to know that their day was ending. When I saw them at the trial, I knew that they were the soldiers of the rear guard, captains of a doomed army retreating through the snow and praying that the quick, dark wolves, waiting in the cold, would come no closer. They were old men and could not accept the new sun rising out of the strange waters. The world was very different now.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: The Water is Wide (1972), p. 311-312

Men , World , Water , Waiting

“I pray that that common commitment would be the result of these debates.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero/0716_escudero2.asp The Official Website of the Senate of the Philippines http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2009,
2009

“Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to send,
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

The Character of a Happy Life (1614), stanza 5.

God , Books

“Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 287
1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Light

“The key is to practice praying - and to practice praying regularly, privately, sincerely and specifically.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Sincerity

“The disturbing element of the accident was the millions of people and their expectations. Their wishes, their prayers and their feelings. And the extent to which people had gone. And you have nothing, absolutely nothing to repay them. You just sit in your bed and you just enjoy the benefit of how the others have prayed. And lots of them who really went through physical penance, when you've actually sat back and enjoyed it.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People , Feeling

“The religious instruction I received of the Lutheran pastor Bode, preparatory to my confirmation, produced no effect upon my mind in favour of the truth of our divine religion, having studied all the works written against it with so much energy. I often insinuated to pastor Bode my doubts on religious matters, but either he did not or would not understand me; I was wavering between deism and atheism, so much so, that had it not been for the love towards my revered father, and the persuasions of Ferry, I should have avoided being present at the imposing and sacred ceremony of confirmation, which produced such an effect upon my young mind, that I prayed sincerely to God to give me faith, and had I not continued to read with Ferry and one Belzing so many blasphemous works, I should have returned to my former religious principles much sooner, as I did at a later period of my life.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love , Life , God , Truth

“We have had landlord rule longer, far longer than the life of the oldest man in this vast assembly, and I would ask you to look at the results of that rule. The landowners have had unlimited sway in Parliament and in the provinces. Abroad the history of our country is the history of war and rapine: at home, of debt, taxes, and rapine too. In all the great contests in which we have been engaged we have found that this ruling class have taken all the honours, while the people have taken all the scars. No sooner was the country freed from the horrible contest which was so long carried on with the Powers of Europe, than this law, by their partial legislation, was enacted—far more hostile to British interests than any combination of foreign powers has ever proved. We find them legislating corruptly: they pray daily that in their legislation they may discard all private ends and partial affections, and after prayers they sit down to make a law for the purpose of extorting from all the consumers of food a higher price than it is worth, that the extra price may find its way into the pockets of the proprietors of land, these proprietors being the very men by whom this infamous law is sustained…”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 142.
1840s

Life , Men , Hostility , War

“There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

People , Nature , Appearance , Painting

“These be the great Twin Brethren
To whom the Dorians pray.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

The Battle of Lake Regillus; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It is not well for a man to pray, cream; and live, skim milk.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Life Thoughts (1858)

“Acceptance is right. Kindness is right. Love is right. I pray, right now, that we're moving into a kinder time when prejudice is overcome by understanding; when narrow-mindedness, and narrow-minded bigotry is overwhelmed by open-hearted empathy; when the pain of judgmentalism is replaced by the purity of love.”

Janet Jackson (1966) singer from the United States

Acceptance speech of a humanitarian award from the Human Rights Campaign, as quoted in an [ AP report (19 June 2005), and "SHe said" Issue 1325 Between The Lines News (23 June 2005) http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=14760

Love , Pain , Understanding , Time

Quotes about pray page 7

Quotes about pray
page 7