Prostration Quotes

The word "open" and the expression "opening her legs" were, on her lover's lips, charged with such uneasiness and power that she could never hear them without experiencing a kind of internal prostration, a sacred submission, as though a god, and not he, had spoken to her. ~ Pauline Reage

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race ... and the hearts of the meanest were humbled. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order - never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Be always at work scraping the dirt from the well.
To everyone who suffers, perseverance brings good fortune.
The Prophet has said that each prostration of prayer is a knock on heaven's door. When anyone continues to knock, felicity shows its smiling face. ~ Rumi Muhammad Jalal Ud Din Balkhi

We do not adopt a belief because it is true (they are all true), but because some obscure power impels us to do so. When this power leaves us, we suffer prostration and collapse, a tete-a-tete with what is left of ourselves. ~ Emil Cioran

Had the heavens fallen and mixed themselves with the earth, had the people of London risen in rebellion with French ideas of equality,* had the Queen persistently declined to comply with the constitutional advice of her ministers, had a majority in the House of Commons lost its influence in the country, - the utter prostration of the bereft husband could not have been more complete. ~ Anthony Trollope

The supreme thing is worship. The attitude of worship is the attitude of a subject bent before the King ... The fundamental thought is that of prostration, of bowing down. ~ G. Campbell Morgan

Prostration: placing the body in reverence, to submit, to surrender. In many faiths it is used to relinquish the ego. In Tibetan tantric Buddhism they do one hundred thousand prostrations to overcome pride. In Islam, prostration has been known to overcome many diseases. ~ Eve Ensler

I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me ... ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I do believe that those who compare the religious Right to the Nazis have fallen victim to polemical heat prostration. ~ Richard John Neuhaus

Negative thinking will always lead to failure and nervous prostration; but positive faith- positive thinking -will lead you towards happy, healthy, and abundant living. ~ Albert E Cliffe

There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep, this is it; and yet we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us; and if we dream at such a time, words which are really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost a matter of impossibilty to separate the two. Nor is this, the most striking phenomenon, incidental to such a state. It is an undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before us, will be influenced, and materially influenced, by the mere silent presence of some external object: which may not have been near us when we closed our eyes: and of whose vicinity we have had no waking consciousness. ~ Charles Dickens

Let my idle chatter be the muttering of prayer, my every manual movement the execution of ritual gesture, my walking a ceremonial circumambulation, my eating and other acts the rite of sacrifice, my lying down prostration in worship, my every pleasure enjoyed with dedication of myself, let whatever activity is mine be some form of worship of you. ~ Adi Shankaracarya

Had Allah lifted the veil for his slave and shown him how He handles his affairs for him, and how Allah is more keen for the benefit of the slave than his own self, his heart would have melted out of the love for Allah and would have been torn to pieces out of thankfulness to Allah. Therefore if the pains of this world tire you, do not grieve. For it may be that Allah wishes to hear your voice by way of Dua'a. So pour out your desires in prostration and forget about it and know; that verily Allah does not forget it. ~ Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man
these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

I entertain a private suspicion that physical sports were much more really effective and beneficent when they were not taken quite so seriously. One of the first essentials of sport being healthy is that it should be delightful; it is rapidly becoming a false religion with austerities and prostrations. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed. ~ Gustave Flaubert

The intelligent person, viewing the great number of so-called diseases that arise out of this prostration of the functions of life, and realising that they have one and all grown out of the habitual violations of the laws of life, will recognise at once that the first step in the restoration of health needs must be to make amends at once by the unconditional return to the simplicity and perfect obedience to the laws that have been so perseveringly violated. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

The instinctive posture of grief is a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. ~ Edith Wharton

Cradle My Heart

Last night, I was lying on the rooftop, thinking of you. I saw a special Star, and summoned her to take you a message. I prostrated myself to the Star and asked her to take my prostration to that Sun of Tabriz so that with his light, he can turn my dark stones into gold. I opened my chest and showed her my scars, I told her to bring me news of my bloodthirsty Lover. As I waited, I paced back and forth, until the child of my heart became quiet. The child slept, as if I were rocking his cradle. Oh Beloved, give milk to the infant of the heart, and don't hold us from our turning. You have cared for hundreds, don't let it stop with me now. At the end, the town of unity is the place for the heart. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed.

Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even t ~ Blaise Cendrars

There will come a day when a person would be willing to give everything they ever loved, everything they ever owned, everything they ever chased in this life, everything between the heavens and earth ... just for the chance to come back here and make just one sajdah (prostration). Just one. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

You carried me nine months before bringing me to life
You polished my talent when I was less than five
You always grant me mirth and surround me with angelic care
Hence, giving you the world's treasures are still not fair
God created you to be the source of mercy on this hard planet
You are the one who taught me speaking and every good habit
I always pray to God during prostration and when I kneel
That he bless your time and make me under your heel ~ Yasser Kashef