Quotes about prayer
page 7

Potter Stewart photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Bill Hybels photo
Jason Aldean photo
Bill Hybels photo

“Prayer is a bridge from despair to hope.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Pierce Brosnan photo
Angela of Foligno photo
Bobby Jindal photo

“Whether you voted for him or not, whether you supported the new leaders of Congress or not, they're our president, they're our Congress, they need our prayers, they need our support.”

Bobby Jindal (1971) American politician; two-term Governor of Louisiana

"In Iowa stop, Jindal says GOP must offer solutions" http://web.archive.org/web/20111102015628/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-jindal-iowa,0,532358.story, Chicago Tribune, November 22, 2008

Muhammad photo
Ahmad Sirhindi photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

““Pray for those you send, shield them by prayer.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Six: Assault on the Nine. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988, 294).

Steve Blank photo

“Build it and they will come” is not a strategy; it’s a prayer.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "How To Test The Assumption That People Actually Want Your Product" https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2016/06/14/how-to-test-the-assumption-that-people-actually-want-your-product/#420ab8f74217. June 14, 2016.

Gordon B. Hinckley photo
Statius photo

“The priest confirmed it not, and my prayer was lost.”
Non ratus ore sacerdos, damnataeque preces.

Source: Thebaid, Book VI, Line 200 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Oliver Cowdery photo
Bill Hybels photo
Herrick Johnson photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“"The door is locked, Captain." "Then I'll break it down." "It is a shrine." "Then I'll say a prayer of forgiveness after I've knocked it down."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Pedro Ferreira and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 13
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Gordon B. Hinckley photo
Emil Nolde photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
George W. Bush photo
Thomas Chalmers photo
Bo Burnham photo
Narada Maha Thera photo
Aisha photo

“The Prophet said: Prayer in congregation is twenty-five levels better than a prayer offered on one’s own.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Nasai hadith 840

Jerry Falwell photo
Cesar Chavez photo

“No longer dream that human prayer
The will of Fate can overbear.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 202

Kunti photo
Qutb al-Din Aibak photo

“In 1195 when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. “The temples were converted into mosques,” writes Hasan Nizami, “and the voices of the summoners to prayer ascended to the highest heavens, and the very name of idolatry was annihilated.”… Farishtah specifically mentions that during the capture of Kalinjar “fifty thousand kaniz va ghulam, having suffered slavery, were rewarded with the honour of Islam.””

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Thus enslavement resulted in conversion and conversion in accelerated growth of Muslim population.
Hasan Nizami, Taj-u-Maasir, E.D., II, 231. Farishtah, I, 62. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“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

Anne Sexton photo

“To love another is something
like prayer and it can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Admonitions to a Special Person" (1974) from Last Poems frameless QOTD 2007·11·09 Sound file
Poems 1971-1973 (1981)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer
which like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book VIII, line 530
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Bob Dylan photo

“Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Visions of Johanna

Muhammad photo
Evagrius Ponticus photo
Bill Hybels photo

“Developing prayer fitness is similar to developing physical fitness: we must follow a pattern in order to stay balanced.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“After a considerable walk through the forest, where I became acquainted with several of the little lakes I am so fond of, I came to Hestehaven and Lake Carl. Here is one of the most beautiful regions I have ever seen. The countryside is somewhat isolated and slopes steeply down to the lake, but with the beech forests growing on either side, it is not barren. A growth of rushes forms the background and the lake itself the foreground; a fairly large part of the lake is clear, but a still larger part is overgrown with the large green leaves of the waterlily, under which the fish seemingly try to hide but now and then peek out and flounder about on the surface in order to bathe in sunshine. The land rises on the opposite side, a great beech forest, and in the morning light the lighted areas make a marvelous contrast to the shadowed areas. The church bells call to prayer, but not in a temple made by human hands. If the birds do not need to be reminded to praise God, then ought men not be moved to prayer outside of the church, in the true house of God, where heaven's arch forms the ceiling of the church, where the roar of the storm and the light breezes take the place of the organ's bass and treble, where the singing of the birds make up the congregational hymns of praise, where echo does not repeat the pastor's voice as in the arch of the stone church, but where everything resolves itself in an endless antiphony — Hillerød, July 25, 1835”

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

1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Muhammad photo
Richard Matheson photo
Democritus photo

“Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Lester B. Pearson photo

“It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)

Thomas Frank photo
Muhammad photo
Katy Perry photo

“I remember really vividly kneeling by my bed as a nine-year-old, saying my prayers and asking God to give me boobs that were so big that if I laid on my back I wouldn’t be able to see my feet.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

As quoted in "Perry prayed for bust results" in The Sun (17 August 2009) http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/usa/2590921/Katy-Perry-used-to-pray-as-a-child-to-have-big-boobs.html

Luigi Cornaro photo
Jackson Browne photo

“Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender
who started out so young and strong only to surrender”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

The Pretender (1976)

Christopher Moore photo
Keshub Chunder Sen photo
James Montgomery photo

“Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

What is Prayer?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Adolf Hitler photo
Muhammad photo

“The prayer is one of the (primary) dictates of religion, in it lies the pleasure of the Lord, the Mighty and the Glorious, and it is the conduct of the Prophets.”

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

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 231
Shi'ite Hadith

Bill Hybels photo
Alexander Maclaren photo

“Turn your confidence and your fears alike into prayer.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 600.

Bill Hybels photo
Michele Bachmann photo

“Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. This isn't something that we take lightly. My comments were not meant to be ones that were taken lightly. What I was saying in a humorous vein is there are things happening that politicians need to pay attention to. It isn't everyday we have an earthquake in the United States.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Bachmann Plays Down Comments Linking Disasters and Deficits
The Caucus
The New York Times
2011-08-29
Sarah
Wheaton
Trip
Gabriel
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/bachmann-plays-down-comments-linking-disasters-and-deficits/
2011-09-03
asked about her "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians" remarks after her rally
2010s

Muhammad photo

“Jabir reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The metaphor of the five prayers is that of an sizeable flowing river at the door of one of you in which he washes five times every day."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 5, hadith number 1043
Sunni Hadith
Variant: Jabir reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The metaphor of the five prayers is that of an sizeable flowing river at the door of one of you in which he washes five times every day."

G. I. Gurdjieff photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Jeff Flake photo
T. E. Lawrence photo
Zainab Salbi photo
John Calvin photo
Carol Ann Duffy photo

“I cannot say where you are. Unreachable
by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable
in the air, even if souls are stars.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Death and the Moon, from Feminine Gospels (2002).

Stanley Hauerwas photo
Muhammad photo
Richard Rohr photo

“Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 127

Antoni Lange photo

“All our blasphemies are only little prayers.”

Antoni Lange (1862–1929) Polish writer and philosopher

Vox Posthuma

“Oh! for this baptism of fire! when every spoken word for Jesus shall be a thunderbolt, and every prayer shall bring forth a mighty flood.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 22.

Muhammad photo

“The prayer of a person is (in reality) a light in his heart, so whoever desires, can illuminate his heart”

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

by means of prayers
Kanzul `Ummal, Volume7, Tradition 18973
Shi'ite Hadith

Charles Sprague photo

“Gay, guiltless pair,
What seek ye from the fields of heaven?
Ye have no need of prayer,
Ye have no sins to be forgiven.”

Charles Sprague (1791–1875) Boston businessman and poet

The Winged Worshippers

Muhammad bin Qasim photo

“Muhammad built at Nirun a mosque on the site of the temple of Budh, and ordered prayers to be proclaimed in the Muhammadan fashion and appointed an Imam.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Nirun (Sindh) . The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 158.
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Evagrius Ponticus photo
Aurangzeb photo
Sri Chinmoy photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Octavius Winslow photo

“Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life.”

Octavius Winslow (1808–1878) English theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 458.

Ray Comfort photo

“When we are first born into God’s kingdom we generally get our prayers answered immediately, but as we grow God teaches us patience by letting us wait.”

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

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

“Give me a baptism of glowing love,
Thy power and presence wheresoe'er I rove;
And my last prayer, all other prayers above —
Oh, give to me
More of Thyself, Lord Jesus: more of Thee!”

Anna Shipton (1815–1901) British religious writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 397.

R. A. Torrey photo
Joanna Newsom photo
Tanith Lee photo
Tanith Lee photo
James Dobson photo

“…and Britain was saved, because of a national day of prayer. Ladies and gentlemen, we desperately need our own Miracle of Dunkirk today.”

James Dobson (1936) Evangelical Christian psychologist, author, and radio broadcaster.

"The Response" prayer rally, 2011-08-06, quoted in * Kyle
Mantyla
The Response: Dobsons Ask God To Give America A "Miracle At Dunkirk"
Right Wing Watch
2011-08-06
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/response-dobsons-ask-god-give-america-miracle-dunkirk
2011-08-06
2011

Steve Scalise photo