By prayer, I do not mean any bodily exercise of the outward man; but the going forth of the spirit of Life towards the Fountain of Life, for fullness and satisfaction: The natural tendency of the poor, rent, derived spirit, towards the Fountain of Spirits.

Isaac Penington.

“I, that still pray at morning and at eve,

Loving those roots that feed us from the past,

And prizing more than Plato things I learned

At that best Academe, a mother’s knee,

Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed,

Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt

That perfect disenthralment which is God.”

Lowell’s “Cathedral.”

“The aim of prayer is to attain to the habit of goodness, so as no longer merely to have the things that are good, but rather to be good.”

Clement of Alexandria.