A Quote by Toru Takemitsu

Music is a form of prayer.

Toru Takemitsu

Quote Topics

Music Form Music Is Prayer

Quote Author

Toru Takemitsu
Japanese - Composer
October 8, 1930 - February 20, 1996

Another form of prayer, called cataphatic, honors and reverences images and feelings and goes through them to God. This form of prayer also has an ancient and well-attested history in the world of religions. Any sort of prayer that highlights the mediation of creation can be called cataphatic. So, praying before icons or images of saints; the mediation of sacraments and sacramentals; prayer out in creation - all these are cataphatic forms of prayer

Gregory A. Boyd

When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Denise Levertov

Prayer is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination. ... For prayer is not a request for something: it is the expression of a mode of being, a means of existing and of causing to exist, ... The organ of Prayer is the heart, the psychospiritual organ, with its concentration of energy, its himma. ... Prayer is a "creator" of vision, ... .

Henry Corbin

If it is God who gives prayer, then God often gives it in the form of gratitude, and gratitude itself, when it is received attentively in prayer, is healing to the heart. Prayer is such a mysterious business for something so ordinary and everyday.

Roberta Bondi

Our every thought, image or affirmation is a prayer. Therefore, if everything you think, feel, say or do is a form of prayer, then make it uplifted and exalted.

Mark Victor Hansen

When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.

Thomas Merton

Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven.

Ephrem the Syrian

The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.

Jane Frances de Chantal

One form of prayer moves us particularly to take up the task of evangelization and to seek the good of others: it is the prayer of intercession. Let us peer for a moment into the heart of Saint Paul, to see what his prayer was like. It was full of people: "...I constantly pray with you in every one of my prayers for all of you... because I hold you in my heart" (Phil 1:4, 7). Here we see that intercessory prayer does not divert us from true contemplation, since authentic contemplation always has a place for others.

Pope Francis

Say the prayer first thing in the morning when you open your eyes; then say it again before you go to sleep. Dream the prayer. Feel the prayer with your emotional body. Be the prayer; align your faith and intent with the prayer until your whole life is based on this prayer.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

A spiritual prayer is a humble prayer. Prayer is the asking of an alms, which requires humility... The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends.

Thomas Watson

Bibles read without prayer; sermons heard without prayer; marriages contracted without prayer; journeys undertaken without prayer; residences chosen without prayer; friendships formed without prayer; the daily act of prayer itself hurried over, or gone through without heart: these are the kind of downward steps by which many a Christian descends to a condition of spiritual palsy, or reaches the point where God allows them to have a tremendous fall.

J. C. Ryle

Prayer worth calling prayer, prayer that God will call true prayer and will treat as true prayer, takes for more time by the clock than one man in a thousand thinks.

Alexander Whyte

Prayer from the depth and prayer from the surface are two prayers. One can utter what Christ has called 'vain repetitions', just repeating the prayer; one does not fix one's mind on the meaning of the prayer. If the depth of one's heart has heard the prayer, God has heard it.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.