I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. There are so many of them it really gives me a headache! and each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.
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As translated by Fr. John Clarke (1976)Therese of Lisieux
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But there is a nature which dwells inside also. Just enjoy that also. There are beautiful hills, beautiful sceneries, and beautiful things created for you by God, but there is a scenery, beautiful mountains, beautiful air, beautiful sound, beautiful light inside also created for you.
Maharaji (Prem Rawat)
"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all—without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty...But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty..." (on the Alder Tree)
George MacDonald
When we speak of prayer or of the results of prayer we always imply only one kind of prayer — petition, or we think that petition can be united with all other kinds of prayers.… Most prayers have nothing in common with petitions. I speak of ancient prayers; many of them are much older than Christianity. These prayers are, so to speak, recapitulations; by repeating them aloud or to himself a man endeavors to experience what is in them, their whole content, with his mind and his feeling.
G. I. Gurdjieff
Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful.
Wassily Kandinsky
It [eloquence] consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. ...We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart... We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect. 16
Blaise Pascal
Therese of Lisieux
Theron, Charlize
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