Prayer Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

My religious training told me that in times of personal uncertainty one should seek God's direction through personal prayer and study of the Christian scriptures.

Preston Manning

Souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use.

Teresa of Ávila

Unceasing prayer is the unbroken union of the soul with God, so that life from God flows into our life; and from our life, purity and holiness flow back to God.

Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.

OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs ;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

There is a way of beholding nature that is itself a form of prayer.

You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.

What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love?

Carol Ann Duffy

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream!

If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that cloth is leather. It's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic complex.
Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.

Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed, or God's Word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again.

William Gurnall

It isn't about singing a particular hymn or reciting a prayer – it's about a relationship with your Heavenly Father who loves and cares for you.

Brian Houston (pastor)

I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.

Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God's saints have been held.

Edward McKendree Bounds

People who are serious about something always make room for it in their schedules. If prayer is important to you, then you'll find time to do it.

Solitude is Wisdom's school. Attend then the lessons of your own soul; become a pupil of the wise God within you, for by his tuitions alone shall you grow into the knowledge and stature of the deities. The seraphs descend from heaven, in the solitudes of meditation, in the stillness of prayer.

Amos Bronson Alcott

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection.

Mary Baker Eddy

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Walk in Christ's light daily through fidelity to personal and liturgical prayer, nourished by meditation on the inspired word of God.. Make the daily celebration of the Eucharist the center of your life.

Pope Benedict XVI

If we do not love one another, we certainly shall not have much power with God in prayer.

Dwight L. Moody

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

Prayer is an acknowledgment that our need of God's help is not partial but total.

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.

Tim Keller (pastor)