Prayer Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prayer feeds the soul - as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul - and it brings you closer to God.

The mundane use of the Gayatri, its repetition for healing the sick, illustrates the meaning we have given to prayer.

You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher.

I believe that there is no prayer without fasting and there is no real fast without prayer.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

William Shakespeare

If thou rememberest that God standeth by to behold and visit all that thou doest; whether in the body or in the soul, thou surely wilt not err in any prayer or deed; and thou shalt have God to dwell with thee.

Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my lifelong keeping. You cannot see its waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear...the distant beating of its surf.

If a person abandons his prayer such that he neither desires its rewards nor fears its chastisement, for such a person I do not care if he dies a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.

Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation...

Abraham Lincoln

The things which annual prayer were mentioned before me (and those were): a dog, a donkey and a woman. I said, "You have compared us (women) to donkeys and dogs. By Allah! I saw the Prophet praying while I used to lie in (my) bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I disliked to sit and trouble the Prophet. So, I would slip away by the side of his feet."

Narrated 'Ali: When it was the day of the battle of Al-Ahzab (i. e. the clans), Allah's Apostle said, "O Allah! Fill their (i. e. the infidels') houses and graves with fire as they busied us so much that we did not perform the prayer (i. e. 'Asr) till the sun set."

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

Abraham Lincoln

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.

Thomas Jefferson

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer.

We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.

William Shakespeare

How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life? No generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency. The survivors wanted to communicate everything to the living: the victim's solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether?

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs, and thout keepst me free. Lest I forgot them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen. If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart, thy love for me still waits for my love.

Rabindranath Tagore