Prayer Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer.

As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. Give us strength, too - strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces. And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A prayer may chance to rise From one whose heart lives in the grace of God. A prayer from any other is unheeded.

Dante Alighieri

In vocal prayer we speak to God; in mental prayer he speaks to us. It is then that God pours Himself into us.

The meaning of prayer is that I want to evoke that Divinity within me.

Christians fight best on their knees. Whatever good may be done is done and brought about by prayer.

God is ready to give more quickly, and to give more than you ask; yea, he offers his treasures if we only take them. It is truly a great shame and a severe chastisement for us Christians that God should still upbraid us for our slothfulness in prayer, and that we fail to let such a rich and excellent promise incite us to pray.

The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust', but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.

Abraham Lincoln

Prayer is no mere exercise of words or of the ears, it is no mere repetition of empty formula.

Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service. Try to give unconditionally whatever a person needs in the moment. The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time... Do not worry about why problems exist in the world - just respond to people's needs... We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop.

Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.

Henry David Thoreau

Chanting is no more holy than listening to the murmur of a stream, counting prayer beads no more sacred than simply breathing.... If you wish to attain oneness with the Tao, don't get caught up in spiritual superficialities.

For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.

It is not possible to engage in the direct apostolate without being a soul of prayer. We must be aware of oneness with Christ, as he was aware of oneness with his Father. Our activity is truly apostolic only insofar as we permit him to work in us and through us with his power, with his desire, with his love.

The name of one who forsakes his prayer intentionally is written upon The door of Hell from which he shall (eventually) enter.

The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him.

Begin your day with prayer, and make it so soulful that it may remain with you until the evening.

In prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

Alexandre Dumas

Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next, as a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting for all the people of the nation. And I do earnestly recommend to all the People, and especially to all ministers and teachers of religion of all denominations, and to all heads of families, to observe and keep that day according to their several creeds and modes of worship, in all humility and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace and bring down plentiful blessings upon our Country.

Abraham Lincoln

Oh with what prayers and fasting Shall mortal man deserve To see that glimpse of Heaven.

G. K. Chesterton

Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.