Quotations about Christian prayer that may inspire you.

Choosing just a small selection of quotations about Christian prayer, at the end of two millennia of practise, provides only a pale reflection of the wealth of inspiration and encouragement offered. However, we hope you find this selection both informative and motivating.

"The mind is not perfectly at prayer until the one praying does not think of himself or know he is praying".
Antony of Egypt

"The Lord's Prayer may be committed to memory quickly, but it is slowly learnt by heart."
Frederick Denison Maurice

"As I urged you above, the moment you start praying, raise your heart upwards, and lower your eyes downwards; enter inside your inner person and pray in secret to your Father who is in heaven."
Aphrahat

"Don't imagine that if you had a great deal of time you would spend more of it in prayer. Get rid of that idea! Again and again God gives more in a moment than in a long period of time, for his actions are not measured by time at all."
Teresa of Avila

"I don't say anything to God. I just sit and look at him and let him look at me."
Peasant of Ars

"Make it your care to pray without ceasing, for prayer is light to the soul, and it acts as a guard to the body."
Babai

"Blessed are you if you have to struggle hard in prayer. Say your words, offer up your complaint, seek out your Judge."
Evagrius of Pontus

"In learning to pray, no laboratory is needed but a room; no apparatus but ourselves. The living God is the field of force into which we enter in prayer, and the only really total failure is to stop praying and not to begin again."
Douglas V. Steere

"You can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer. And so it is fitting to pray at your trade, on a journey, standing at a counter or sitting at your handicraft."
John Chrysostom

"Prayer is an exercise of the spirit, as thought is of the mind."
Mary F. Smith

"The same kind of prayers cannot be uttered continuously by any one person. A lively person prays one way. A person brought down by the weight of gloom or despair prays another. One prays another way when the life of the spirit is flourishing, and another way when pushed down by the masss of temptation."
John Cassian

"Anyone who prays should pray having his heart in touch with his mouth and his mind with his lips."
Philoxenus of Mabbug

"He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life."
William Law

"The longer one prays, the better it goes."
John Chapman

"In a single day I have prayed as many as a hundred times, and in the night almost as often."
St Patrick