This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I feel that art has something to do with achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." - Saul Bellow
"In the religion which we shall call dynamic, prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is an elevation of the soul that can dispense with speech." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"In all real prayer there are two persons interacting with each other: God and the finite mind. The individual is meeting the conditions for finding God, and God is finding the opportunity to enter into a kind of relationship with the individual otherwise not possible. For in prayer at its best both God and man meet, both to foster the creation of new values in and through each other and to enjoy mutual fellowship for its own sake." - Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci
"Prayer transcends imposing our will upon others. Prayer represents opportunity to become more than such cycles by employing our science of feeling to bring new possibilities to an existing situation… Prayer is a concrete, measurable, and directive force in creation. Prayer is real. To pray is to do “something!" - Gregg Braden
"The equation of active prayer: If Thought = emotion = feeling then our world mirrors the effect of our prayer" - Gregg Braden
"Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings." - Phillips Brooks
"All true prayer is worship – the ascription of worth to the Eternal. Without adoration, thanksgiving may become a miserliness, petition a selfish clamor, intercession a currying of special favors for our friends, and even contemplation may turn into a refined indulgence." - George Arthur Buttrick
"Prayer is not a vain attempt to change God’s will: it is a filial desire to learn God’s will and share it. Prayer is not a substitute for work: it is the secret spring and indispensable ally of all true work – the clarifying of work’s goal, the purifying of its motives, and the renewing of its zeal." - George Arthur Buttrick
"When we pray for another, it is not an attempt to alter God’s mind toward him. In prayer we add our wills to God’s good will… that in fellowship with Him He and we may minister to those whom both He and we love." - Henry Sloane Coffin
"Not in any prescribed form of prayer, or studied liturgie, but in such manner as the Spirit of grace and prayer teacheth all the people of God." - John Cotton
"Jesus talked a great deal about money. Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables were concerned with how to handle money and possessions. In the gospels, an amazing one out of ten verses (288 in all) deal directly with the subject of money. The Bible offers 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 on money and possessions." - Howard Dayton, Jr.
"Prayer is the turning of the mind and heart to God. To pray is to stand in awareness before God, to see him constantly and to talk with him in hope and fear." - Saint Demetrius of Rostov, aka Dimitry, Dmitri Rostovsky NULL
"Every genuine strain of music is a serene prayer, or bold, inspired demand, to be united with all, at the Heart of things." - John Sullivan Dwight
"The soul is unconditioned and infinite… Absorption in the Divine Unity is the soul of prayer." - Fihi Ma Fihi NULL
"Every condition in your life is the out-picturing of a belief in the subconscious. Every ailment, every difficulty that you have, is but the embodiment of a negative idea somewhere in your subconscious, which is actuated by a charge of fear. Prayer wipes out these negative thoughts and then their embodiment must disappear too. The healing must come." - Emmet Fox
"Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God." - Emmet Fox
"Truth is true because it is true – not because we make it so. Prayer does not change things for us, but it changes them by tuning us in to the eternal Truth. You have nothing to deal with but your own thoughts, and your own beliefs. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - Emmet Fox
"Our prayer for others ought never to be: “God, give them the light Thou has given to me!” but: “God! Give to them all the light and truth they need for their highest development!”" - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with utmost humility." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Prayer is not asking; it is the longing of the soul." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Three of the greatest teachers of the world, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, have left unimpeachable testimony that they found illumination through prayer and could not possibly live without it." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Poetry even at its purest is not prayer; but it rises from the same depths as the need to pray." - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
"Prayer revives the hope of the heart." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Without the worship of the heart liturgical prayer becomes a matter of formal routine; its technically finished performance may give aesthetic pleasure, but the spirit has gone out from it." - Aelred Graham
"One of the real perils of growing older is that we tend to think less and less. We feel that we know all the answers… The mind and the soul become wrinkled. The function of prayer is not to enable us to acquire what we should like to possess, but rather to become what we are capable of being." - Sidney Greenberg
"The function of prayer is not to enable us to acquire what we should like to possess, but rather to become what we are capable of being." - Sidney Greenberg
"The most effective kind of prayer is that in which we place ourselves, in our hearts, before God, relinquishing all resistance, letting go of all secret irritation, opening ourselvse to the truth, to God’s holy mystery, saying over and over again, “I desire truth, I am ready to receive it, even this truth which causes me such concern, if it be the truth. Give me the light to know it – and to see how it bears on me.”" - Romano Guardini
"Prayer is for the soul what nourishment is for the body." - Judah Halevi, also Yehuda Halevi or ha-Levi
"Prayer is the opening of the soul to God so he can speak to us. “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance; it is laying hold of God’s willingness.”" - Georgia Harkness
"Prayer… is… a technique for contacting and learning to know Reality… the exploration of Reality by exploring the Beyond, which is within." - Gerald Heard
"In prayer we seek not to make God visible but to make ourselves visible to God." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Prayer in action; it requires complete mobilization of heart, mind, and soul… For the soul, home is where the prayer is... Prayer calls for self-reflection, for contrition and repentance, examining and readjusting deeds and motivations, for recanting the ugly compulsions we follow, the tyranny of acquisitiveness, hatred, envy, resentment." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Prayer is an act which makes the heart audible to God." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"He who has no prayer free from his thoughts has no weapon for battle. By prayer I mean the prayer which is constantly active in the innermost secret places of the soul." - Hesychius of Jerusalem NULL
"We do not get faith by arguing about religion; we get faith on our knees, in and through surrender, and prayer. God gives faith to those who need and want it." - Elmer George Homrighausen
"Now there is no doubt that the prayer of quiet, that a certain formless recollection and loving feeding upon the sense and presence of God, as here and now, is a most legitimate prayer." - Friedrich von Hügel, formally Baron Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hugel
"Prayer is nought but a rising desire of the heart into God by withdrawing of the heart from all earthly thoughts." - Walter Hilton
"Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy." - William Ralph Inge
"A child is born through the rending of the womb; a man is born through the rending of the world. The call to prayer signalizes both kinds of birth, the first is uttered by the lips, the second by the very soul." - Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal