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Ask God for what man can give, and you may get it.
-English Proverb
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Pray that you will never have to bear all that you are able to endure.
-Yiddish Proverb
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Prayer and practice is good rhyme.
-Scottish Proverb
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I asked for wisdom...
And God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity...
And God gave me brains and the strength to work.
I asked for courage...
And God gave me danger to overcome.
I asked for love...
And God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for favors...
And God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.
My Prayer has been answered.
-Anon., (of Islamic origin)
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Pray to God but continue to row to the shore.
-Proverb
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When we take one step toward to God, he takes seven steps toward us.
-Proverb
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One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.
-Proverb
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No one can pray well, but those who live well.
-Proverb
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Short prayers reach heaven.
-Proverb
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O Lord! thou knowest how busy I must be this day: if I forget thee, do not thou forget me.
-Sir Jacob Astley
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention -- on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God -- that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying.
-W. H. Auden
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Spiritual favors are not always to be looked for, and not always to be relied on.
-Amelia E. Barr
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When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn't that the best position from which to pray?
-Ethel Barrymore
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The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
-Charles Baudelaire
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It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
-Georges Bernanos
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So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
-Bible
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But if it were I, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before Him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. Job 5:8-9
-Bible
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Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. I Thessalonians
-Bible
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Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, but I will instruct you in the good and right way. I Samuel 12:23
-Bible
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If I regard wickedness in my heart the Lord will not hear. Psalms 66:18
-Bible
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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-Ambrose Bierce
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O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper--and sleep too--than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgin slumbers.
-Andrew A. Bonar
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O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray and gather my thoughts to you, I cannot do it alone.
In me it is dark, but with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not desert me;
My courage fails me, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace;
in me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me.
Father in Heaven praise and thanks be to you for the night
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A prayer written in Tegel prison, Berlin
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The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions.
-Robert Brault
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Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
-Phillips Brooks
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God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrust the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Everybody prays whether you think of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.
-Frederick Buechner
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In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
-John Bunyan
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Prayer is not a substitute for work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.
-George Buttrick
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The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships.
-Dr. Alex Carrel
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We know little of the things for which we pray.
-Chaucer
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A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.
-Alexander Cockburn
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Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.
-Leonard Cohen
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When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The one way he can reach it is by prayer.
-Russel H. Conwell
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Cut your morning devotions into your personal grooming. You would not go out to work with a dirty face. Why start the day with the face of your soul unwashed?
-Robert A. Cook
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I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
-John Donne
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The Lord's prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.
-Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley
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In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty, - the duty of prayer - the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal.
-Charles Eastman
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If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
-Meister Eckhart
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To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.
-Meister Eckhart
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Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man's spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.
-Mary Baker Eddy
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Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant Woman
-Desiderius Erasmus
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As for meditation, I would like you to be a disciple of prayer, because without prayer there is no habitual union with God. You need a type of prayer which is suited to your temperament, your situation, your inner inclination, consequently, your heart. Speak simply and candidly to our Lord as with another self, as with your sister. Be a child who is full of love and surrendered to her good maker. Let it be an interior conversation with God more than a work of the mind. Then, a scattered, distracted meditation will come together, because it will express all the thoughts and needs of your heart.
-Peter Julian Eymard, counseling Miss Antonia B
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Do you wish to learn the secret of true Eucharistic prayer? Consider, then, all the mysteries in the light of the Blessed Sacrament. It is a divine prism through which they can all be studied. The Holy Eucharist is, indeed, 'Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today, and the same forever' (Heb 13:8). In this Sacrament He glorifies all the mysteries of His life and prolongs, as it were, the exercise of all His virtues. The Eucharist is, in a word, the great Mystery of our faith to which all Catholic truths lead.
-Peter Julian Eymard
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How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.
-Francois FeNelon
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Father mother god, help me to feel my oneness with you. Help me to feel my equality with my brothers and sisters
-Paul Ferinni, from a prayer given by Paul Ferinni at the Humanity
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Most men pray for power, the strength to do things. Few people pray for love, the quality to be someone.
-Robert D. Foster
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Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
-Benjamin Franklin
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Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
-Andr
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Just pray for a tough hide and a tender heart.
-Ruth Graham
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I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.
-Angelina Grimke
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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
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Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
-Ernest Hemingway
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Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
-George Herbert
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Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.
-Etty Hillesum
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Prayer is the voice of faith.
-William Van Horne
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Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
-Victor Hugo
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There is no greater distance than that between a man in prayer and God.
-Ivan Illich
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Prayer is a groan.
-St. Jerome
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Religion is in the heart, not in the knees.
-Douglas William Jerrold
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The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
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The greatest tragedy in the world is a divided church. We must come together. So don't start talking about doctrine, because if you do, we shall be divided. But there is one thing we can do. We may not be able to agree about doctrine, but we can always pray together.
-Lloyd Jones, Authentic Christianity
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Prayer is the best test of an individual, and it is also the best test of a church. A church can be flourishing: She can be successful in terms of organizations, she can be tremendously active and appear to be prosperous, but if you want to know whether she is a real church or not, examine the amount of prayer that takes place.
-Lloyd Jones, Primatial Pastoral Letter
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Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.
-Juvenal
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The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
-S
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Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.
-S
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Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.
-S
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It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies. We have for too long separated the head from the heart, and we are the lesser for it. We love God with the mind and we love God with the heart. In reality, we are descending with the mind into the heart and there standing before God in ceaseless wonder and endless praise. As the mind and the heart work in concert, a kind of loving rationality pervades all we say and do. This brings unity to us and glory to God.
-S, The Prayers of Soren Kierkegaard,
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If this obstacle is from Thee, Lord, I accept it; but if it is from Satan, I refuse him and all his works in the name of Calvary.
-Isobel Kuhn
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The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.
-Brother Lawrence
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A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
-Doris Lessing
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A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.
-Gotthold Lessing
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They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you.
Since but one voice is heard, it
-C.S. Lewis
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To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
-Martin Luther
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All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.
-Martin Luther
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It is good to pray for the repair of mistakes, but praying earlier would keep us from making so many. When puzzled, go to prayer and listen.
-J. C. Macaulay
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That prayer has great power which a person makes with all his might. It makes a sour heart sweet, a sad heart merry, a poor heart rich, a foolish heart wise, a timid heart brave, a sick heart well, a blind heart full of sight, a cold heart ardent. It draws down the great God into the little heart; it drives the hungry soul up into the fullness of God; it brings together two lovers, God and the soul, in a wondrous place where they speak much of love.
-Mechthild of Magheburg
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I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
-Henri Matisse
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Don't put people down, unless it's on your prayer list.
-Stan Michalski
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Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
-John Milton
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There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The fates are not quite obdurate; they have a grim, sardonic way of granting them who supplicate the thing they wanted yesterday.
-Roselle Mercier Montgomery
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More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
-Mother Theresa
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We are to be shut out from men, and shut in with God.
-Andrew Murray
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To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. ... Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts -- beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful -- can be thought in the presence of God. ... Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue.
-Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome
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Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.
-Henri Nouwen
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Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity. ... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue, ... a conversation with God.
-Henri Nouwen
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Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers.
-Austin O'Malley
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When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him.
-Norman Vincent Peale
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When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
-Emo Philips
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We are all weak, finite, simple human beings, standing in the need of prayer. None need it so much as those who think they are strong, those who know it not, but are deluded by self-sufficiency.
-Harold C. Phillips
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Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God.
-Peace Pilgrim
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Practice in life whatever you pray for and God will give it to you more abundantly.
-Edward Bouverie Pusey
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If you can't pray a door open, don't pry it open.
-Lyell Rader
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A devotee who can call on God while living a householder's life is a hero indeed. God thinks: 'He is blessed indeed who prays to me in the midst of his worldly duties. He is trying to find me, overcoming a great obstacle -- pushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real hero.'
-Sri Ramakrishna
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Indeed many things which we shall not be able to discover either by the experiment of works or by the investigations of reason we shall deserve to be taught by importunate prayer, by the revelation of divine inspiration.
-Richard of Saint Victor
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Ask God's blessing on your work, but don't ask him to do it for you.
-Dame Flora Robson
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Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
-Saint Augustine of Hippo
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Take God for your spouse and friend and walk with him continually, and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.
-Saint John of the Cross
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Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
-George Santayana
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It is from prayer that the spirit's victory springs.
-Schillerbuch
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Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.
-John Selden
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Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Bow, stubborn knees!
-William Shakespeare
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Common people do not pray; they only beg.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
-Socrates
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Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality...plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way...Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered...the strength not length of your prayer...wins...God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord.
-C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon
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Sweet souls around us watch us still,
Press nearer to our side;
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
With gentle helpings glide.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Prayer is talking with God and telling Him you love Him, conversing with God about all the things that are important in life, both large and small, and being assured that He is listening.
-C. Neil Strait
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An essential condition of listening to God is that the mind should not be distracted by thoughts of resentment, ill-temper, hatred or vengeance, all of which are comprised in the general term, the wrath of man.
-R. V. G. Tasker
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Whatever is your best time in the day, give that to communion with God.
-Hudson Taylor
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When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator; and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.
-Jeremy Taylor
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Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.
-Jeremy Taylor
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When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't.
-Sir William Temple
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Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
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If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.
http://www.bartleby.com/42/637.html
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, Morte D'Arthur (The Passing of Arthur)
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There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
-Teresa of Avila
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Why is it when we talk to God, we're praying, but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?
-Lily Tomlin
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If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.
-Peter Townsend
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Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.
-Martin Tupper
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Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-Mark Twain
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More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.
-Mark Twain
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Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
-Mark Twain
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Prayer is a passport to heaven. Your communication with God.
-Source Unknown
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Do not make prayer a monologue -- make it a conversation.
-Source Unknown
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Our thanks to God should always precede our requests.
-Source Unknown
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Pray for what you want, but work for what you need.
-Source Unknown
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Prayer moves the hand that moves the universe.
-Source Unknown
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Seven days without prayer makes one weak.
-Source Unknown
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My prayer to God is a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous! God has granted it.
-Voltaire (Fran
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I hate it when people pray on the screen. It's not because I hate praying, but whenever I see an actor fold his hands and look up in the spotlight, I'm lost. There's only one other thing in the movies I hate as much, and that's sex. You just can't get in bed or pray to God and convince me on the screen.
-Orson Welles
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We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
-Charles C. West
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Please God, said the embryo, I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves, and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You have made for me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron, and other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. If I want a boat I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me.
-T. H. (Terence Hanbury) White, The Once and Future King
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I prayed for riches and achieved success,
All that I touched turned into gold. Alas!
My cares were greater, and my peace was less
When that wish came to pass.
I prayed for glory; and heard my name
Sung by sweet children and by hoary men.
But ah! the hurts, the hurts that came with fame!
I was not happy then.
I prayed for love, and had my soul's desire,
Through quivering heart and body and through brain
There swept the flame of its devouring fire;
And there the scars remain.
I prayed for a contented mind. At length
Great light upon my darkened spirit burst,
Great peace fell on me, also, and great strength.
Oh! had that prayer been first!
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Answered Prayers
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When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
-Oscar Wilde
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Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing ourselves.
-David J. Wolpe
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There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.
-John Wooden
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Books about Prayer
