Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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In Silence: Why We Pray
Donald Spoto, Ph.D.

1 "God, in me and through what He has made, addresses me; in and through my experience, through everything that I am and everything that happens, God somehow speaks."

2 "Amid the unimaginable suffering of a Nazi death camp, Corrie ten Boom could still claim, 'No matter how deep our darkness, God is deeper still.'"

3 "We come from and live within the Ultimate Reality, God Himself."

4 "All the world, and all who are in it, are bound together in a love we cannot define or describe. But we know that somehow nothing is more real than this."

5 "Prayer contributes to the evolution of our collective consciousness concerning the power of good in this world."

6 "As Julian of Norwich wrote, all will be well; everything will, at last, be well."

7 "Providence arranges everything, so all is right in the end."

8 "God is indeed the Ultimacy toward which everything that is yearns."

9 "Prayer is not an occupation for a certain time, but a permanent state of the spirit." Theophan the Recluse, 19th century Russian Orthodox bishop

10 "God's action penetrates every atom of your body; indeed, into the very marrow of your bones." Jean-Pierre de Caussade

11 "Creator, Maker, Giver of breath – how manifold are your works, O sole God, whose powers no other possesses. You created the earth according to your heart." Egyptian hieroglyphic prayer, ca. 2000 bce

12 "'I believe in the sun even when it is not shining', a Jewish prisoner wrote on the wall of a concentration camp. 'I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God, even when He is silent.'"

13 "Prayer is an encounter, a dialogue with One Who has first addressed me; hence it begins with attentive listening."

14 "Love, in all its guises and categories, makes us somehow aware of the inevitability of connection with another and others: this human experience cannot be separated from a sense of the divine."

15 "The world's Creator is the source of the love that will finally triumph. And the evidence for that living, driving, reasonable expectation is the existence and the force of effective goodness in the world. It does not give up; it does make a difference."

16 "The very idea of the sacred and our connection to it is an element in the structure of consciousness."

17 "Prayer is not about having wishes granted by a remote Being. It is about becoming more and more alert to the One Who sustains us in love and awakens us each day to the reality of His presence, if only we give Him a chance."

18 "'Selflessness emphasizes relationships through recognition of the interdependency of all things', as one contemporary Zen master has said."

19 "Jesus proclaimed the single, essential, transforming reality: God really is, and He is here, near and within."

20 "Your unfailing Providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live." The Book of Common Prayer

21 "In God we ALL live and move and have our being."

22 "Teach us to respect the essence of all religions, and lead us to the One Ultimate Reality." Japanese prayer

23 "By the 4th millennium b.c., humans had certainly developed a sense of a divine being – and they associated this being with creation and with characteristics their cultures held to be good. It is at least tenable (and probably quite correct), to say that the sense of the divine is an innate human perception – not an invented projection, but rather the acknowledgment of a primal certainty."

24 "God is at work every moment, sustaining everything in being – and therefore, He is at the center of every human being."

25 "God attends, heeds, listens to and provides for us in our particularity: our existence is somehow significant to Him, and even our casual steps are known to and guided by Him."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite