John Donne Quotes

I neglect God and his angles for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

The mind gets distracted in all sorts of ways. The heart is its own exclusive concern and diversion.

Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual calamity.

We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten the Lord of the work.

God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without and the tumult of our passions within bewilder us and prevent us from listening to him

I do a great wrong in His sight, when I beseech Him that He will hear my prayer, which as I give utterance to it, I do not hear myself. I entreat Him that He will think of me; but I regard neither myself nor Him. Nay, what is worse, turning over corrupt and evil thoughts in mine heart, I thrust a dreadful offensiveness into His presence.

Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan.

The inattentive, slovenly way we drift into the presence of God is an indication that we are not bothering to think about Him. Whenever our Lord spoke of prayer, He said, "Ask." It is impossible to ask if you do not concentrate.

The Jesus who is the one whom we search for even when we do not know that we are searching and hide from even when we do not know that we are hiding.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

We've been taught that the Christian life is a life of peace, and when we don't have peace, we assume the problem lies within us. Not only do we feel anxious, but we also feel guilty about our anxiety! The result is a downward spiral of worry, guilt, worry, guilt.

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.

A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.

Of Consciousness, her awful Mate. The Soul cannot be rid - as easy the secreting her behind the Eyes of God.

Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words.

Thank God we don't serve God with our feelings, otherwise I don't know where I would be. - Pray for me.

The true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.

What, at peace with the Father and at war with the children? It cannot be.

I was almost persuaded to be a Christian. I thought I never again could be thoughtless and worldly. But I soon forgot my morning prayer or else it was irksome to me. One by one my old habits returned and I cared less for religion than ever.

Excess of trouble may, for a time, distract and overwhelm the soul. Our Lord himself seems to have experienced somewhat of this. Our prayers, perhaps, are never more acceptable, than when they are offered in broken accents, in sighs, and groans.

I want to stay in the habit of 'glancing' at my problems and 'gazing' at my Lord.

Prayer is hard work. We may neglect it because we're too tired, too busy, or too distracted to put into prayer the effort required.

Self-realization may be and sometimes is attained even by people who are struggling with sick and otherwise imperfect bodies; but it cannot be attained unless one can concentrate and meditate uninterruptedly upon God.