The Heart Of Prayer Quotes

In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door. ~ David Steindl-Rast

At the heart of silence is prayer. At the heart of prayer is faith. At the heart of faith is life. At the heart of life is service. ~ Mother Teresa

When we try to express communion with God in words, we rapidly reach the end of our capacities. But in the depths of our being Christ is praying for more than we imagine. Compared to the immensity of that hidden prayer of Christ in us, our explicit praying dwindles to almost nothing. That is why silence is so essential in discovery the heart of prayer.
Although God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never wants to impose anything on us. Often God's voice comes in a whisper, in a breath of silence. Remaining in silence in God's presence, open to the Spirit, is already prayer.
It is not a matter of trying to obtain inner silence at all costs by following some method that creates a kind of emptiness within. The important thing is a childlike attitude of trust by which we allow Christ to pray within us silently, and then one day, we will discover that the depths of our being ar inhabited by a Presence. ~ Taize

This is the heart of prayer - not getting things from God, but getting God. ~ David Mathis

It is a fact: Of all the people we ever know in our lifetime, the only thing we have in common with them is a handful of shared experiences. ~ Joel T. McGrath

The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, "Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am so sorry, Biddy, and have as much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am a little worthier of you than I was --not much, but a little. And Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an opportunity awaits me, which I set aside when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you. ~ Charles Dickens

All our nourishment becomes ourselves; we eat ourselves into being ... For every bite we take contains in itself all our organs, all that is included in the whole man, all of which he is constituted ... We do not eat bone, blood vessels, ligaments, and seldom brain, heart, and entrails, nor fat, therefore bone does not make bone, nor brain make brain, but every bite contains all these. Bread is blood, but who sees it? It is fat, who sees it? ... for the master craftsman in the stomach is good. He can make iron out of brimstone: he is there daily and shapes the man according to his form. ~ Paracelsus

I can't believe you can create such beauty."
"I can't believe I'm finally looking at my beauty. You can't see it, Lark. I know you can't. Maybe it's a girl thing or your shitty family or you do see it and are just fishing for compliments, but you are too beautiful to get right on paper. No matter how much I try," I said, cupping her face, "I can't make my art look nearly as perfect as you."
"Shit," she whispered. "Did you just think that up because it was fucking brilliant?"
Before I could answer, little Lark stepped up as far as she could on her tippy toes, pulled me down to her, and kissed me hard and deep. The girl claimed my breath like she'd already claimed my heart. No way was I imagining all of her wonderful qualities. I wasn't that damn creative. ~ Bijou Hunter

The rats at the door had gone away. I drank another bottle of wine. To think I was once rich. I once had money. I had everything but something.

I used to think that all people desire to be cared for; some are so used to it that they take it for granted, others, who never feel it, desire it so much that they constantly
need it. So much in fact, that when they don't receive it they have outbursts, and in the end they wind up pushing away those people who in the end would have cared for them
as their heart desired within its innermost depths. So they are always alone, always on the edge of society, within it, but at the same time, apart from it. They are like spectators
watching with envy the dance of mankind, wishing for that one feeling that only another's love can bring. A whisper
that speaks to one and only one and says:

"You truly are worth something."

They never know that feeling that shines on some.

So they cease to expect and begin looking elsewhere for that…wonderful whisper of…

War.

Love almost seems like war.

The ancient Greeks used to say, 'Love as if you will one day hate.'

I used to think that meant something very
pessimistic, that love was not real.

But really, man is just an animal anyway.

It's not just about that though, the Greeks meant more. It's like, 'Live as if you will one day die.' Do not take
for gran ~ Michael Szymczyk

Some people may find material chores irksome; they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us to communicate through matter. . . . We are all called to do, not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things, with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God.

. . . A community which has a sense of work done well, quietly and lovingly, humbly and without fuss, can become a community where the presence of God is profoundly lived. . . . So the community will take on a whole contemplative dimension. ~ Jean Vanier

Rise up smiling, and walk with me. Rise up in the armor of thy body and what shall pass shall make thee unafraid. Walk among the yellow hills, for they belong to thee. Walk upon grass and let thy feet descend into soft soil; in the end when all has failed thee the soil shall comfort thee, the soil shall receive thee and in thy dark bed thou shalt find such peace as is thy portion.

In thine armor, hear my voice. In thine armor, hear. Whatsoever thou doest, thy friend and thy brother and thy woman shall betray thee. Whatsoever thou dost plant, the weeds and the seasons shall spite thee. Wheresoever thou goest, the heavens shall fall upon thee. Though the nations shall come unto thee in friendship thou art curst. Know that the Gods ignore thee. Know that thou art Life, and that pain shall forever come into thee, though thy years be without end and thy days without sleep, even and forever. And knowing this, in thine armor, thou shalt rise up.

Red and full and glowing is thy heart; a steel is forging within thy breast. And what can hurt thee now? In thy granite mansion, what can hurt thee ever? Thou shalt only die. Therefore seek not redemption nor forgiveness for thy sins, for know that thou hast never sinned.

Let the Gods come unto thee. ~ Michael Shaara

Maybe, it is just enough to believe with a positive heart that people didn't let you down. It could be just this: They couldn't give you the compassion you really wanted based on where their heart is right now. Maybe, not now, but years later they will catch the memory of you in a quiet moment. There on that Sunday morning, a light will shine through the fog of lies, misunderstanding and frustration they built inside their angry mind about your true character. And, when it does, the shadows will be casted out to reveal a scared and hurt little boy or girl that just wanted to be loved, but went about it all wrong. Maybe, on that day, the whisper of their gratitude for your love will find its way back to your heart. And when that day comes, you will find yourself smiling all day long and not know why. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Who"

The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in,
Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.
October's the month for storage.

The shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach:
Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.
I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.
They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,
Nailed to the rafters yesterday:
Inmates who don't hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,
A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,
Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!
The orange pumpkins have no eyes.
These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.
I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,
Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth
I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness
Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.
There were such enormous flowers,
Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.
Now they light me up like an electric bulb.
For weeks I can remember nothing at all. ~ Sylvia Plath

We are all exist in an interconnected matrix of life, so the state of your mind and heart affects the whole. ~ Narissa Doumani

She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all. ~ Haruki Murakami

Kicking the door shut with the heel of my boot, I wedge her against it, raining kisses on her skin, wishing I could climb inside her and kiss away the welts left on her heart and mind. ~ Poppet

Well, let them seize on all they can;
One treasure still is mine,
A heart that loves to think on thee,
And feels the worth of thine. ~ Anne Bronte

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation---in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with ~ Rabindranath Tagore

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he'd sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he'd think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb - and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior - its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself. ~ Tao Lin

An image is seen based on the light speed between the observer and the event. An image is light. Scientists theorize about sighting the edge of the universe and believe they are looking at the beginning of time. Things started moving away from each other when the Big Bang exploded 18 billion years ago. Sages theorize that this impassive distancing will end someday. Then things will reverse and start moving back towards each other. If reversal fails and contraction continues, the universe will collapse into itself, imploding into a Black Hole that can encapsulate an entire universe into a dark space the size of a fist. The size of a fist mirrors the size of a heart. ~ Eileen R. Tabios

You were a town with one pay phone and someone else was using it.
You were an ATM temporarily unable to dispense cash.
You were an outdated link and the server was down.
You were invisible to the naked eye.
You were the two insect parts per million allowed in peanut butter.
You were a car wash that me as dirty as when I pulled in.
You were twenty rotting bags of rice in the hold of a cargo plane sitting on the runway in a drought-riddled country.
You were one job opening for two hundred applicants and you paid minimum wage.
You were grateful for my submission but you just couldn't use it.
You weren't a Preferred Provider.
You weren't giving any refunds.
You weren't available for comment.
Your grave wasn't marked so I wandered the cementary for hours, part of the grass, part of the crumbling stones. ~ Kim Addonizio

You and I were created for joy, and if we miss it we miss the reason for our existence. If our joy is honest joy, it must somehow be congruous with human tragedy. This is the test of joy's integrity. It is compatible with pain. Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy. ~ Lewis B. Smedes

In parting, I would like to give you one small piece of advice to keep in your heart. You may have heard me say this before, but it is the key point of the entire path, so it bears repeating: All that we are looking for in life - all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind - is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don't take the time to pause and notice what we already have. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favorite song that you knew by heart. It's like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a television show you watched for years. It's something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there's an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can't rest until I know the answers. ~ Cecelia Ahern

No one wanted the job. What had seemed one of the least challenging tasks facing Franklin D. Roosevelt as newly elected president had, by June 1933, become one of the most intransigent. As ambas-sadorial posts went, Berlin should have been a plum - not London or Paris, surely, but still one of the great capitals of Europe, and at the center of a country going through revolutionary change under the leadership of its newly appointed chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Depending on one's point of view, Germany was experiencing a great revival or a savage darkening. Upon Hitler's ascent, the country had undergone a brutal spasm of state- condoned violence. Hitler's brown- shirted paramilitary army, the Sturmabteilung, or SA - the Storm Troopers - had gone wild, arresting, beating, and in some cases murdering communists, socialists, and Jews. Storm Troopers established impromptu prisons and torture stations in basements, sheds, and other structures. Berlin alone had fi fty of these so- called bunkers. Tens of thousands of people were arrested and placed in "protective custody" - Schutzhaft - a risible euphemism. An esti-mated fi ve hundred to seven hundred prisoners died in custody; others endured "mock drownings and hangings," according to a police affi davit. One prison near Tempelhof Airport became especially no-torious: Columbia House, not to be confused with a sleekly modern new building at the heart of Berlin called Columbus House. The up-heaval prompted one Jewish leader, Rabbi Step ~ Erik Larson

Music is the language of the heart, the language of the soul, the language of nature and the language of the universe. ~ Debasish Mridha

The lace flowed in a V down the bodice to mirror the cut of the back of the dress. I looked like someone else in it, someone older and wiser. Someone with a pure heart that held no secrets. Someone … not like me. ~ Mary E. Pearson

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

The heart of a Christian, like the moon, commonly suffers an eclipse when it is at the full, and that by the interposition of the earth. ~ John Flavel

She was a good person with a bad mouth,
She has spent her life hiding behind the blades she grew on the tip of
Her tongue,
Some called her bitch, while others took many steps away from her madness.
But rare and few are those who could always find a way to see how genuine her heart is and
How pure her soul is.
It only took one look through her eyes to see how such eyes could never lie,
Never fake,
And never pretend …. ~ Samiha Totanji

I think I try to speak to the heart of the woman who I know is interested in growing into herself. ~ Oprah Winfrey

A soul that is nurtured by hatred toward man can not be at peace with God, Who has said: If you forgive not men their sins, neither shall your Father forgive your sins (Matt. 6:15). If a man does not want to be reconciled, you must at least guard yourself from hating, praying with a pure heart for him, and speaking no evil of him. ~ Maximus The Confessor

For there has never been a story nearly as tragic as the one of Frankenstein, except for that of Johnny Heart and his Francesca Valentine. ~ Rae Hachton

Have you ever been lost hope in what you believed so far in life as no meaning? And when started adapting to the life what you got and moving forward, suddenly something comes up and glitters a shine on the hope you lost belief. Your brain is never believed the glitter, but heart attracts to the stuff which you may get hurt. Why I am always been the victim of the life's crisis. Hope makes the life a life, in the meantime it is the source of all pains. ~ Vivek Thangaswamy

-I told you:
My heart is from another youth
My blood, from another sea
Do not come close to my shores
But do not wander far from my lands
For it is in your eyes
Alone
That I look for the day
And on your lips
Alone
That I look for the rain
I give you my island
My storms and my tide
If you let me moor
To your quiet waters
And hide under flowers. ~ Emmanuelle Soni-Dessaigne

I miss you like the sun misses the flowers, like the sun misses the flowers in the depths of winter, instead of beauty to direct it's light to, the heart hardens like the frozen world which your absence has banished me to. ~ William Thatcher

When you give, give from the place of the heart because it is the right thing to do, not the easy thing to do. ~ Suze Orman

That's what we called him. Our prince. And we were princesses. God's princesses. His daughters, who deserved nothing less than God's best. And while we were determining God's best, the message was clear: don't settle for anything less. Ladies, we've gone nuts. Of course God wants us to marry a great guy. Of course he wants us to find someone who loves us, treats us right, and maybe even makes our heart beat a little faster. He certainly wants someone whose calling we can join, a man with whom we can serve God with effectiveness and joy. But while I'm all for understanding our worth in God's eyes, remember that we're not perfect prima donnas who deserve the best and nothing less. On the contrary, we're sinners who will someday marry other sinners. God has a plan for our future marriages, and it's not to fulfill all our dreams or give us a storybook ending. His goal is to work out his purposes and glorify himself. ~ Lisa Anderson

Snow-flakes
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My parents were very Old World. They come from Brooklyn, which is the heart of the Old World. Their values in life are God and carpeting. ~ Woody Allen

The world is ruled by such dreams, dreams of impassioned hearts, and improvisations of warm lips, not by cold words linked in chains of iron sequence,
not by logic. The heart with its passions, not the understanding with its reasoning, sways, in the long run, the actions of mankind. ~ William Kirby

The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die. ~ Anne Bronte

There is a myth at the heart of things and some element of genius in the heart of each person. ~ Michael Meade

I Nephi, being exeedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father; wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Hope is a little candle that continues to flicker in the heart in the darkest moments of impossibility. ~ Debasish Mridha

Let her cover the mark as she will,'" he quoted sardonically, "'the pang of it will always be in her heart. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Our responses are the fingerprint of our heart and the DNA of our conscience. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The big event that rips through the heart of things and changes life for everyone, the unforgettable moment when something ends and something else begins. Was that what this was, he asked himself, a moment similar to the outbreak of war? No, not quite. War announces the beginning of a new reality, but nothing had begun today, a reality had ended, that was all, something had been subtracted from the world, and now there was a hole, a nothing where there had once been a something, as if every tree in the world had vanished, as if the very concept of tree or mountain had been erased from the human mind. ~ Paul Auster

He was sitting in the midst of a children's party at Harold's Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he took little part in the games. The children, wearing the spoils of their crackers, danced and romped noisily and, though he tried to share their merriment, he felt himself a gloomy figure amid the gay cocked hats and sunbonnets.
But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness. The mirth, which in the beginning of the evening had seemed to him false and trivial, was like a sothing air to him, passing gaily by his senses, hiding from other eyes the feverish agitation of his blood while through the circling of the dancers and amid the music and laughter her glance travelled to his corner, flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his heart. ~ James Joyce

I didn't want anyone getting close to me. I pushed people away. Built a wall around my heart to keep them out. I let one person take down the bricks, and I suppose it was a good idea, but, sometimes, he hurts me too. And it hurts so much worse then any other hurt I've felt because he is one of the very few that matter anymore. ~ Jacqueline Kelly

in a single instant, can the consciousness of the sin that has been committed in thoughts, words, and actions of our past life, be unfolded to us. When once the conscience is awakened, it springs up in the heart spontaneously, and God awakens the conscience when we least expect it. Then we can find no excuse for ourselves; the deed is there and bears witness against us. ~ Hans Christian Andersen