Quotes about prayer

Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.

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.

Never marry a woman who prays too much.

“Go ahead, say it.”

“‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done—’”

“Stop! Stop right there. ‘Thy will be done—’ No Muslim claiming to be a ‘slave of God’ ever gave a more sweeping consent than that. In that prayer you invite Him to do His worst. The perfect masochist.

"My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!"

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see

And what I do in any thing,

To do it as for thee.

Do not beguile my heart,

Because thou art

My power and wisdom. Put me not to shame,

Because I am

Thy clay that weeps, thy dust that calls.

With sick and famish'd eyes,

With doubling knees and weary bones,

To thee my cries,

To thee my groans,

To thee my sighs, my tears ascend:

No end?My throat, my soul is hoarse;

My heart is wither'd like a ground

Which thou dost curse.

My thoughts turn round,

And make me giddy; Lord, I fall,

Yet call.

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

Who goes to bed and does not pray,

Maketh two nights to every day.

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,

Made of a heart, and cemented with tears;

Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;

No workman's tool hath touch'd the same.

A HEART alone

Is such a stone

As nothing but

Thy pow'r doth cut.

Wherefore each part

Of my hard heart

Meets in this frame,

To praise thy name.

That if I chance to hold my peace,

These stones to praise thee may not cease.

O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,

And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

Yet Lord restore thine image, hear my call:

And though my hard heart scare to thee can groan,

Remember that thou once didst write in stone.