Best Prayer Quotes

Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray. Your helplessness is your best. prayer. ~ Ole Hallesby

There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying. ~ John G. Lake

Helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. ~ Ole Hallesby

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best. ~ David Brainerd

There is no other place where the heart should be so free as before the mercy seat. There, you can talk out your very soul, for that is the best prayer that you can present. Do not ask for what some tell you that you should ask for, but for that which you feel the need of, that which the Holy Spirit has made you to hunger and to thirst for, you ask for that. ~ Charles Spurgeon

There is enough sin in my best prayer to send the whole world to Hell. ~ John Bunyan

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. ~ Alice Walker

He prayeth best who loveth best. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The best prayer is repentance.
The best sermon is character.
The best mirror is reality.
The best shield is faith.
The best hammer is will.
The best ammunition is truth.
The best fortress is reason.
The best school is life.

The best attorney is justice.
The best counselor is experience.
The best warrior is courage.
The best teacher is patience.
The best student is humility.
The best prophet is tomorrow.
The best general is strategy.
The best priest is piety.

The best physician is nature.
The best herb is peace.
The best medicine is forgiveness.
The best wealth is happiness.
The best angel is mercy.
The best companion is prudence.
The best light is wisdom.
The best religion is love. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day. ~ Carl Fredrik Wisloff

Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. He hears it from the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness. ~ Ole Hallesby

I believe in prayer. It's the best ... ~ Josephine Baker

Leviathan laughs at the javelin, but he trembles at prayer. Sword and spear need furbishing, but prayer never rusts, and when we think it most blunt it cuts the best. Prayer is an open door which none can shut. Devils may surround you on all sides, but the way upward is always open. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese, very close overhead, calling, calling, their marvellous strange cry, as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Go where your best prayers take you. ~ Frederick Buechner

My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here's an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences. ~ Graydon Carter

The prevailing idea seems to be, that I come to God and ask Him for something that I want, and that I expect Him to give me that which I have asked. But this is a most dishonouring and degrading conception. The popular belief reduces God to a servant, our servant: doing our bidding, performing our pleasure, granting our desires. No, prayer is a coming to God, telling Him my need, committing my way unto the Lord, and leaving Him to deal with it as seemeth Him best. ~ Arthur W. Pink

I think intuition can be a form of answered prayer. You do the best you can - thinking, figuring, planning - and then you pray. ~ Conrad Hilton

It is said that if one chooses to pray to a rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive. ~ Ming-Dao Deng

I pray everyday, all the time. Prayer is when you are actually experiencing a conversation with divine intelligence. ~ John Assaraf

Hungarian Language - savage it may be but of a beauty that has nothing human about it, with sonorities of another universe, powerful and corrosive, appropriate to prayer, to groans and to tears, risen out of hell to perpetuate its accent and its aura ... words of nectar and cyanide. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Satan's time of tempting is usually after an ordinance; and the reason is, because then he thinks he shall find us most secure. When we have been at solemn duties, we are apt to think all is done, and we grow remiss, and leave off that zeal and strictness as before; just as a soldier, who after a battle leaves off his armour, not once dreaming, of an enemy. Satan watches his time, and when we least suspect, then he throws in a temptation. ~ Thomas Watson

The old clock on the kitchen wall still clicked its minutes with fussy punctuality. A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill. Isabel had managed to sit up a little against the wall, and she sobbed at the sight of the diminutive form, which she had dared to imagine as bigger, as stronger – as a child of this world. 'My baby my baby my baby my baby,' she whispered like a magic incantation that might resuscitate him. The face of the creature was solemn, a monk in deep prayer, eyes closed, mouth sealed shut: already back in that world from which he had apparently been reluctant to stray. Still the officious hands of the clock tutted their way around. Half an hour had passed and Isabel had said nothing. ~ M.L. Stedman

He that leaves off prayer leaves off to fear God. ~ Thomas Watson

Where love is absent, violence is a glaring possibility. Introduce love into any situation and violence gradually evaporates. ~ Pooja Ruprell

That is why none of these man-made catch phrases are in the Bible. You will not find a verse in Scripture where people are told to "bow your heads, close your eyes, and repeat after me." You will not find a place where a superstitious sinner's prayer is even mentioned. And you will not find an emphasis on accepting Jesus.8 We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him. ~ David Platt

May God sanctify every soul. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Knowing that our Father God is in heaven, or (putting it the other way round) knowing that God in heaven is our Father, is meant to increase our wonder, joy, and sense of privilege at being his children and being given the "hot line" or prayer for communication with him. "Hot line" it truly is, for though he is Lord of the worlds, he always has time for us; his eye is on everything every moment, yet we always have his full attention whenever we call on him. Marvelous! But have we really taken it in? ~ J.I. Packer

Does prayer change God or change me? ~ Philip Yancey

I'm in the market for some present tense; I'm on the lookout, shopping around, more so every year. It's a seller's market - do you think I won't sell all that I have to buy it? Thomas Merton wrote, in a light passage in one of his Gethsemane journals: "Suggested emendation in the Lord's Prayer: Take out 'Thy Kingdom come' and substitute 'Give us time!'" But time is the only thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can't recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees. ~ Annie Dillard

Reading, like prayer, remains one of our few private acts ~ William Jovanovich

Like go for a walk, say a little prayer
Take a deep breath of mountain air
Put on my glove and play some catch
It's time that I make time for that
Wade the shore and cast a line
Look up a long lost friend of mine
Sit on the porch and give my girl a kiss
Start livin', that's the next thing on my list. ~ Toby Keith

The life of prayer is just love to God, and the custom of being ever with Him. ~ Teresa Of Avila

May the Heavens be open to your prayers. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The world truly is my oyster, the difficulty is... I haven't discovered the ALL of the tools to shuck it yet. ~ Raymond D. Longoria Jr.

Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.
Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul, it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius reached by words or by example. ~ Thomas Merton

When prayer goes viral, people are not excited about "it" (prayer) but are infectious about "Him ~ Daniel Henderson

A list of birds seen on a given day is also a form of prayer, a thanksgiving for being alive at a certain time and place. Posting that list online is a 21st-century form of a votive offering. ~ Brian Kimberling

It is good for the soul to be in solitude for a great part of the time. But if it should seek solitude for its own comfort and consolation, it will have to endure more darkness and more anguish and more trial. Pure prayer only takes possession of our hearts for good when we no longer desire any special light or grace or consolation for ourselves, and pray without any thought of our own satisfaction. ~ Thomas Merton

Leaders inspire the people around them to become better. ~ Jim George

Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most. ~ Brian Doyle

But from the good health of the mind comes that which is dear to all and the object of prayer-happiness. ~ Aeschylus

Ten thousand people were baptized in the Han river in Seoul, Korea. Imagine! 10,000 people giving their lives to Christ at one time! I will never forget it! ----I felt that the constant prayers of the Korean people had made the difference. I think we in the west should take prayer more seriously. ~ Helen Goldie

God hears and answers every prayer. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

But my father's faith, as I said, was absolute. Through God's prayer he could be granted exactly what he wanted. ~ Amy Tan

The Zankli Sacred Prayer: Oh God, I bring before you your children you have gifted with the light. Bring unto them what is yours to give, your to provide, and yours to understand. Bless them with the joy of goodness, and deliver unto them longevity, wisdom and foresight. ~ M.J. Duff

Prayer is my chief work, and it is by means of it that I carry on the rest. ~ Thomas Hooker

We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer. ~ J. Reuben Clark

A ton of prayer will never produce what an ounce of obedience will. ~ Edwin Louis Cole

I am filled time and again
with a heart-aching wonder
when I think

of the fire
and frost of memories

of the everlastingness
of love

the solace
of family
and the power
of prayer. ~ Sanober Khan

A mantra is basically a means of talking with your thoughts and feelings. It's a time-honored method sometimes referred to as prayer, but really it's an opening of a conversation between the heart and the mind. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Prayer is the atmosphere of revelation, in the strict and central sense of that word. It is the climate in which God's manifestation bursts open into inspiration. ~ Peter Forsyth

Sophistication called for a variety of talents and attitudes, but the minimum requirement was being in New York. Not all New Yorkers achieved it, but nobody elsewhere had a prayer. ~ Barbara Holland

Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither can survive alone. The absence of the one is the absence of the other. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

The fruit and the purpose of prayer is to be oned with and like God in all things. ~ Julian Of Norwich

If he hadn't become a Buddhist monk, Sawaki Roshi would have been successful in a worldly sense in business, politics, or the military. Instead, he devoted his life to wholeheartedly practicing Dogen Zenji's just sitting, or shikantaza, which according to him was good for nothing. For him, social climbing in pursuit of fame and profit was meaningless. The Japanese expression for "waste" is bonifuru, which means "sacrifice," "lose all," or "ruin." So when we say he wasted his life, we use the expression in a paradoxical way - like saying that zazen is good for nothing. ~ Kosho Uchiyama

How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here? ~ Jonathan Edwards

Water has a memory and carries within it our thoughts and prayers. As you yourself are water, no matter where you are, your prayers will be carried to the rest of the world. ~ Masaru Emoto

Every prayer is a need or a lack of something. That's why the rich man doesn't ask for food, but for good health throughout the year. ~ Mwanandeke Kindembo

Every time I travel, government TSA officials seem to recognize that I'm a Muslim and 'randomly' pull me aside for 'special treatment'. My sincere hope and prayer is that, on the Day of Judgment, my Lord's angels also recognize me as a Muslim and pull me aside for special treatment ~ Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

He (Lincoln) was accustomed to hearing words, many of them boring, but he was not accustomed to group silence. ~ Elton Trueblood

The test of sincerity of one's prayer is the willingness to labor on its behalf. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

Prayer, Holy communication with God ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It is of mercy that we are not in hell. It is of mercy that we have the hope of heaven. It is of mercy that we live in a land of spiritual light. It is of mercy that we have been called by the Spirit, and not left to reap the fruit of our own ways. It is of mercy that we still live and have opportunities of glorifying God actively or passively. Surely these thoughts should crowd on our minds whenever we speak with God. Surely we should never open our lips in prayer without blessing God for that free grace by which we live, and for that loving kindness which endureth for ever. ~ J.C. Ryle

Gratitude is uplifting and helps you glow, stay beautiful, and feel eternally young as it churns up zeal and undying enthusiasm. ~ Pooja Ruprell

Peace starts with a prayer. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita