Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
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Chastity prays for me, piety sings, Innocence sweetens my last black breath,...
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Everybody prays whether you think of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.
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For Mercy has a human heartPity, a human face:And Love, the human form divine,And Peace, the human dress. Then every man of every clime,That prays in his distress,Prays to the human form divineLove Mercy Pity Peace.
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A devotee who can call on God while living a householder's life is a hero indeed. God thinks: 'He is blessed indeed who prays to me in the midst of his worldly duties. He is trying to find me, overcoming a great obstacle -- pushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real hero.'
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The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.
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When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.
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But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
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I believe that God prays in us and through us, whether we are praying or not (and whether we believe in God or not). So, any prayer on my part is a conscious response to what God is already doing in my life.
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Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.
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The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
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My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.
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Each one prays to God according to his own light.
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Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
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