A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.
Related Quotes
Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.
You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.
Slavery is theft - theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.
Notwithstanding what some regard as the institutionalization of compassion, the transfer society quashes genuine virtue. Redistribution of income by means of government coercion is a form of theft. Its supporters attempt to disguise its essential character by claiming that democratic procedures give it legitimacy, but this justification is specious. Theft is theft, whether it be carried out by one thief or by a hundred million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft.
If we denote excitation as an end-effect by the sign plus (+), and inhibition as end-effect by the sign minus (-), such a reflex as the scratch-reflex can be termed a reflex of double-sign, for it develops excitatory end-effect and then inhibitory end-effect even during the duration of the exciting stimulus.
We often think of prayer as a means to an end. Prayer is the goal.
To strive in prayer means to struggle through those hindrances which would restrain or even prevent us entirely from continuing in persevering prayer. It means to be so watchful at all times that we can notice when we become slothful in prayer and that we go to the Spirit of prayer to have this remedied. In this struggle, too, the decisive factor is the Spirit of prayer.
One ideological claim is that private property is theft, that the natural product of the existence of property is evil, and that private ownership therefore should not exist... What those who feel this way don't realize is that property is a notion that has to do with control - that property is a system for the disposal of power. The absence of property almost always means the concentration of power in the state.
The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude. When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you in effect, acknowledge that it is there...in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God - an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered. Therefore never supplicate... Appreciate.
I'm amazed, that how salam (peace) is always the first word to start a meeting. but in prayer it is the end word. Maybe it means the end of prayer is the start of a meeting.
All right prayer has good effect, but if you give your whole life to the prayer you multiply its power... No one really knows the full power of prayer. Of course, there is a relationship between prayer and action. Receptive prayer result in an inner receiving, which motivates to right action.
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed
with all prayer (Eph. 6:18)" All sorts of prayer- public, private, mental, vocal. Do not be diligent in one kind of prayer and negligent in others... let us use all.
Some French socialist said that private property was theft... I say that private property is a nuisance.
Were you to ask what are the means of overcoming temptations, I would answer: The first means is prayer; the second is prayer; the third is prayer; and you should you ask me a thousand times, I would repeat the same.
In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.
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