Inspirational Quotes on Prayer

“Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh and blood do not relish.”

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been born in God's thought, and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking." This is a prayer of contentment”

“The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.”

“We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.”

“True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.”

“Obedience is the opener of eyes.”

“For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.”

“A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.”

“Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.”

“The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.”

“[Prayer] is the link between God's inexhaustible resources and people’s needs...God is the source of power, but we are the instrument He uses to link the two together.”

“Prayer will never do our work for us; what it will do is to strengthen us for work which must be done.”

“When God has specially promised the thing, we are bound to believe we shall recieve it when we pray for it. You have no right to put in an 'if', and say, 'Lord, if it be thy will..." This is to insult God. To put an 'if' in God's promise when God has put none there, is tantamount to charging God with being insincere.”

“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.”

“The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.”

“Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of the essence. The ability to wait, and stay, and press belongs essentially to our intercourse with God.”

“God instituted prayer to communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.”

“You can do more than pray after you have prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

“He who neglects to pray alone and in private, however assiduously he frequents public meetings, there gives his prayers to the wind.”

“Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion.”