Religious Behaviour And Experience

"Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul."

"Not every hour, nor every day, perhaps, can generous wishes ripen into kind actions; but there is not a moment that cannot be freighted with prayer."

"Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the infinite scale of man's wants and God's goodness."

"He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small: For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all,"

"O Thou by whom we come to God — The Life, the Truth, the Way; The path of prayer Thyself hast trod; Lord, teach us how to pray."

"Then let us earnest be, And never faint in prayer; He loves our importunity, And makes our cause His care."

"We lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often and long alone with God. No otherwise can the great central idea of God enter into a man's life, and dwell there supreme."

"There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, " My God, my God!""

"In presenting the Divine promises at the throne of grace, we present the best of names at a bank that is solvent. Let us, when we would pray, consider well whether we have a promise for our plea."

"Expect an answer. If no answer is desired, why pray? True prayer has in it a strong element of expectancy."

"Prayer, with our Lord, was a refuge from the storm; almost every word He uttered during that last tremendous scene was prayer; prayer the most earnest, the most urgent, repeated, continued, proceeding from the recesses of the soul, private, solitary; prayer for deliverance, prayer for strength; above every thing prayer for resignation."

"As in poetry, so in prayer, the whole subject matter should be furnished by the heart, and the understanding should be allowed only to shape and arrange the effusions of the heart in the manner best adapted to answer the end designed. From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop."

"Have you never observed how free the Lord's Prayer is of any material that can tempt to subtle self-inspection in the art of devotion? It is full of an outflowing of thought and of emotion toward great objects of desire, great necessities, and great perils."

"Patience and perseverance are never more thoroughly Christian graces than when features of prayer."

"A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love."

"Faithful prayer always implies correlative exertion; and no man can ask honestly and hopefully to be delivered from temptation, unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it."

"Sometimes a fog will settle over a vessel's deck and yet leave the topmast clear. Then a sailor goes up aloft and gets a lookout which the helmsman on deck cannot get. So prayer sends the soul aloft; lifts it above the clouds in which our selfishness and egotism befog us, and gives us a chance to see which way to steer."

"For spiritual blessings, let our prayers be importunate, perpetual, and persevering; for temporal blessings, let them be general, short, conditional, and modest."

"There is something in every act of prayer that for a time stills the violence of passion, and elevates and purifies the affections."

"From the violence and rule of passion, from a servile will, and a commanding lust, from pride and vanity, from false opinion and ignorant confidence; from improvidence and prodigality, from envy and the spirit of slander; from sensuality, from presumption and from despair; from a state of temptation and a hardened spirit; from delaying of repentance and persevering in sin; from unthankfulness and irreligion, and from seducing others; from all infatuation of soul, folly, and madness; from willfulness, self-love, and vain ambition; from a vicious life and an unprovided death, good Lord, deliver us."

"We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others — that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?"

"I Pray Heaven to Bestow The Best of Blessing on THIS HOUSE, and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof!"

"For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine Love Mercy Pity Peace."

""God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all."

"Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endure with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; Amen."

"Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee—and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past. And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength. Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain"."

"The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me thy grace to labour for. Amen."

"She thought about praying, but learned long ago there’d be no answer."

"Prayer was not so much a matter of asking for something as a clear statement of what was important to you; a definition of who you were, and what you lacked, what you were sorry for, what you wished to be. A peeling away to your essence."

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed."

"If I am right, Thy grace impart, Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O teach my heart To find that better way!"

"He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint."

"At Tai Ji Men, I realized that prayer is not merely a ritual but a form of deep reflection and meaningful action."

"In all thou dost first let thy Prayers ascend, And to the Gods thy Labours first commend, From them implore Success, and hope a prosperous End."

"If she had supposed the gods ever listened, she would have prayed."

"A knowledge of the hidden side of life by no means teaches us to forget our dead, but it makes us exceedingly careful as to how we think of them; it warns us that we must adopt a resolutely unselfish attitude, that we must forget all about ourselves, and the pain of the apparent separation, and think of them neither with grief nor with longing, but always with strong affectionate wishes for their happiness and their progress. The clairvoyant sees exactly in what manner such wishes affect them, and at once perceives the truth which underlies the teaching of the Catholic Church with regard to the advisability of prayers for the dead. By these both the living and the dead are helped; for the former, instead of being thrown back upon his grief with a hopeless feeling that now he can do nothing, since there is a great gulf between himself and his loved one, is encouraged to turn his affectionate thought into definite action which promotes the happiness and advancement of him who has passed from his sight in the physical world."

"O God, if in the day of battle I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me."

"All the world screamed. The Reverend did not pray, having decided long ago his boss had already made up his mind about things."

"In the face of real danger Elak forgot the gods and drew his rapier. Prayers, he had found, would not halt a dagger’s blow or a strangler’s hands."

"Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn—and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness—all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are truth, only you, our Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do—that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself—from on high, but through lowliness and abasement."

"The surprising happened to him. In proportion as he became more and more earnest in prayer, he had less and less to say, and in the end he became quite silent. He became silent – indeed, what is if possible still more expressly the opposite of speaking, he became a hearer. He had supposed that to pray is to speak; he learnt that to pray is not merely to be silent but to hear. And so it is; to pray is not to hear oneself speak, but it is to be silent, and to remain silent, to wait, until the man who prays hears God."

"My brother kneels, so saith Kabir, To stone and brass in heathen-wise, But in my brother's voice I hear My own unanswered agonies. His God is as his fates assign His prayer is all the world's—and mine."

"If prayer is an offering of the lips and pleasing to God, then mercifulness is actually the heart’s offering and is, as Scripture says, a sweet fragrance in God’s nostrils. Oh, when you think of God, never forget that he does not have the least understanding about money. My listener, if you were a speaker, what assignment would you choose: to speak to the rich about practicing generosity or to the poor about practicing mercifulness? I am quite sure which one I would choose or, rather, which one I have chosen-if only I were a speaker. Oh, there is something indescribably reconciling in speaking to the poor man about practicing mercifulness!"

"I have visited a few astronauts, but all three either ignored me or prayed. The senseless chanting, I confess, repulsed me."

"Father of All! in every age, In every clime ador'd, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!"

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."

"But though I repeated my plea, and waited on my knees for nearly an hour, there was no answer."

"Resort to sermons, but to prayers most: Praying's the end of preaching."

"They were ordinary soldiers, just the common Jean and Hans, One from the valley of the Rhine and one from fair Provence. They were simple-hearted fellows — every night each said his prayer: The one prayed Vater Unser and the other Notre Père."