Mary Oliver Quotes

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

I say three prayers every night to make sure that God knows I thank him so much.

I've only paid lip service to a spiritual life.

I was always spiritual, even as a child. I was taught to pray, show gratitude. We had an attitude of gratitude. Even if life was ugly, bad or sad - we prayed.

We are all on a journey of faith, and we have to polish that faith.

Religion promotes the divine discontent within oneself, so that one tries to make oneself a better person and draw oneself closer to God.

Praying is like a rocking chair - it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

The key is - I'll say the key - number one, I pray every day.

I pray and I meditate every day. It can be a great, great asset.

As we regularly spend time reading God's Word and talking to Him in prayer, we put ourselves in position for Him to do things in our lives we could never do on our own.

It is not because we are drawn to prayer that we first begin to pray; more often, we have to begin prayer, and then the taste and the desire for it come.

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

My prayer life and my connection with God are on the highest level.

I pray every morning and night before bed.

I do devotion in the morning. I pray and I read the word.

. . . in the spiritual life you must practice. And the only way to practice is by trying to solve your problems with prayer. This develops your spiritual power and it also trains you to use that spiritual power in the most effective way.

Well-developed faith results in well-defined prayers, and well-defined prayers result in a well-lived life.

To pray well is the better half of study.

I meditate on God's life and I read the scriptures. I read something about Him, go through it and spend a lot of time by myself.

Are you living for the things you are praying for?

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.

I was born into a Christian family and brought up in a Lutheran church. My faith has been the center point of my life, really, since I was a child, but at 16 years of age, I fully surrendered my life over to Christ. At that point, as a teenager, I began to grasp the concept of Christ's true love and forgiveness.