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It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray. (Aesop)
Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions. (James Allen)
For the man who prays in his heart, the whole world is a church. (Sylvain of Athos)
In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one. (W. H. Auden)
Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth. (Philip James Bailey)
First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty – if you're very lucky and have said your prayers. (George Balanchine)
Prayer is dialogue, not man's monologue before God. (Hans Urs von Balthasar)
I know I am God because when I pray to him I find I'm talking to myself. (Peter Barnes)
The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep. (Charles Baudelaire)
All great art is a visual form of prayer. (Sister Wendy Beckett)
The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm. (Saul Bellow)
...And we pray, not for new / earth or heaven, / but to be quiet / in heart, and in eye clear. / What we need is here. (Wendell Berry)
Many people pray to be kept out of unexpected problems. Some people pray to be able to confront and overcome them. (Toba Beta)
When the prayer becomes the vibration of the mind and self, then we can create a miracle. (Yogi Bhajan)
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
pray, v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. (Ambrose Bierce)
The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it. (Josh Billings)
-The Mists of Avalon...
Love is the only prayer I know. (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions. (Robert Brault)
An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
You don't need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured. (Bertolt Brecht)
-Wuthering Heights, 1847
And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens... Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! (Emily Bronte)
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. (Phillips Brooks)
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, / And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, / A gauntlet with a gift in it. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? (Robert Browning)
The best prayers have often more groans than words. (John Buchan)
Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart. (John Bunyan)
Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable. (Frederich Busch)
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body... can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships. (Alexis Carrel)
Will God or someone else give me the strength to breathe the breath of prayer and mourning into my paintings, the breath of prayer for redemption and resurrection? (Marc Chagall)
May the long time sun shine upon you, / All love surround you and the pure light within you / Guide your way on. (Sufi Chant)
When I was going blind, I didn't turn to God. It didn't seem to me then - and it doesn't seem to me now - that those items were His concern. Early on, I figured I better begin to learn how to count on myself, instead of counting on supernatural forces. (Ray Charles)
We know little of the things for which we pray. (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered. (Leonard Cohen)
He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
-Roycrofter's Little Journeys, Eminent Artists, 1902...
...everything is vague, confused, and Nature grows drowsy. The fresh evening air sighs among the leaves - the birds, these voices of the flowers are saying their evening prayer. (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)
A coward cannot have any prayer answered. (Nichiren Daishonin)
Pray!!!! When you are making work that is uplifting, works to enhance others and describes the wonderful beauty around us, God honors that appreciation and helps. (Gil Dellinger)
Short prayer pierceth heaven. (Dionysius)
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite. (Carol Ann Duffy)
For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes... (Alexandre Dumas)
It is not a carol of joy or glee, / But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core... I know why the caged bird sings! (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
-b.1260 d.1328...
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "Thank You", that would suffice. (Meister Johann Eckhart)
-Four Souls...
To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. (Louise Erdrich)
May we make every day in our job a light to our lives and those around us. (Elle Fagan)
Many of our prayers were not answered, and for this we are now grateful. (William Feather)
May a Caring Creator care for us and may we continue to care for others. (Tomm Fennell)
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things done. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)
Each one prays to God according to his own light. (Mahatma Gandhi)
In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. (Mahatma Gandhi)
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. (Kahlil Gibran)
You pray in your distress and in your need: would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. (Kahlil Gibran)
Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift. (Elizabeth Gilbert)
It takes waking prayer and working prayer and going to bed in prayer each day with increasing dedication. I must be the best person that I am able to be when I am painting. Tonight the wind is howling and the barrels are full of sky water. (Morris Graves)
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. (Dag Hammarskjold)
Prayer: Holding in mind what you desire, but without adding desire to it. (David R. Hawkins)
He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea. (George Herbert)
Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night. (George Herbert)
Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. (Hippocrates)
Glory be to God for dappled things – / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim. (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. (Victor Hugo)
The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving. (Franz Kafka)
Prayer helps us tap and develop God-given powers, stored within our minds and personalities: great potential strength and ability. (Abdul Kalam)
The word compositon moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe. (Wassily Kandinsky)
Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. (Garrison Keillor)
You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you. (Ken Kesey)
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. (Soren Kierkegaard)
Rather than set aside daily time for prayer, I pray constantly and spontaneously about everything I encounter on a daily basis. When someone shares something with me, I'll often simply say, 'Let's pray about this right now.' (Thomas Kinkade)
One doesn't shout a prayer. (John Leonard, critic)
We should not permit prayer to be taken out of the schools; that's the only way most of us got through. (Sam Levenson)
A sailor does not pray for fair wind. He learns how to sail. (Gustav Lindborg)
Pray, and let God worry. (Martin Luther)
We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil. (Norman Mailer)
I launch myself with the most beautiful prayer I know, the most beautiful thought. Then I let go and see what surprise, what new discovery the universe has in store for me. Thinking I know stops that, blocks the divine light. (John McEnulty)
Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered. (George Meredith)
In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God. (Thomas Merton)
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish. (Michelangelo)
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Prayers are offered up daily - without charge... Refreshments are served when demanded. (Henry Miller)
Art is a prayer, always was, always will be. (Emily Mills)
Enjoying the least things - a chill glass of water, a moment of play with the cat, the sight of sunlight caught in the frost spangling the locust twigs - is a form of prayer. (Stephanie Mills)
If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I'd look up into the sky - up - up - up - into that lovely blue sky that looks like there's no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)
O great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives. (Jim Morrison)
Prayer is just a concentrated way of thinking. Artists do a lot of prayer as they work. (Alfred Muma)
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer. (Dr. Joseph Murphy)
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Reinhold Niebuhr)
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness. (Julian of Norwich)
Prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. (Mary Oliver)
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. (Mary Oliver)
-on publicly funded projects...
For the funding we are about to receive, Oh, Lord, make us truly thankful. Tug forelock. (Judith Palmer)
When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him. (Norman Vincent Peale)
I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. (Jewish proverb)
I've learned... that I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way. (Andy Rooney)
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes. (Rumi)
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer. (Sa'di)
God, let me remember all good losers. (Carl Sandburg)
To work is to pray. (John Singer Sargent)
Pray and then move your feet. (African saying)
Prayer is helplessness casting itself on Power, infirmity leaning on Strength, misery reaching to Mercy, and a prisoner clamoring for Relief. (Fulton J. Sheen)
A feeling of real need is always a good enough reason to pray. (Hannah Whitall Smith)
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. (Socrates)
I pray that your highest creative and spiritual ideals are expressed in this lifetime. (Redenta Soprano)
Oh, I wish that God had not given me what I prayed for! It was not so good as I thought. (Johanna Spyri)
Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one's self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own. (Madame de Stael)
May my soul bloom in love for all existence. (Rudolf Steiner)
Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them. (Rabindranath Tagore)
I pray and try every day to be a better actor. (Rod Taylor)
When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't. (Sir William Temple)
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers. (Saint Teresa of Avila)
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while. (Henry David Thoreau)
My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before... (Leo Tolstoy)
When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic. (Lily Tomlin)
Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps if you are not willing to move your feet. (Author unknown)
Goddess, make me the person my dog thinks I am. (Author unknown)
Lord, please keep one hand on my shoulder and one over my mouth! (Author unknown)
I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it. (Voltaire)
HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world. (Alice Walker)
I don't pray because I don't want to bore God. (Orson Welles)
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. (Oscar Wilde)
A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages. (Tennessee Williams)
I pray - for word is out / And prayer comes round again / That I may seem, though I die old, / A foolish, passionate man. (William Butler Yeats)
Most people consider the course of events as natural and inevitable. They little know what radical changes are possible through prayer. (Paramahansa Yogananda)
Drumming can become a form of prayer. A deep pulse of healing power drawn
from one's inner core. Rhythms that can reach deep - mentally, spiritually,
emotionally, and physically - that can instill an inner peace and balance from within. (Miles Patrick Yohnke)
Art is prayer – not the vulgarized notations handed down to us in the scriptures, but a fresh vital discovery of one's own special presence in the world. (Joseph Zinker)
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