From Raphael Simon, Hammer and Fire (1959):
Prayer is God’s own psychotherapy for His sinful children. It is His method of uncovering unconscious motivations and of recalling to consciousness those things which have been excluded as painful and humiliating.”
From Walter Hylton, The Scale of Perfection (1494):
Prayer is nought but a rising desire of the heart into God by withdrawing of the heart from all earthly thoughts.”
1954
From Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man's Quest for God (Charles Scribner and Sons - 1954)
In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.” RefMgr field[22]: 2″
From Pere Hayneuve, Solid Virtue:
We have never made a better prayer than when, after having made it, we do not know how it was made, since that is a sign that our soul was so attached to God as not to have enough attention left to reflect upon itself.”
From Pierre Charles, Prayer for All Times (January 1, 1925):
The Christian who prays, recollects himself, that is to say he discovers himself, gathers himself together, frees himself from all useless masters, from all unknown hands, from all fast-holding desires which tear him to pieces and so prevent him from being himself.”
From Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, The Astonishing World, Prayer" (1989):
“Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer…”
From Theophan the Recluse, quoted in Timothy Ware, ed., The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (1966)at page 110:
To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.”
1971
From W.H. Auden, A Certain World, Nature of Prayer" (December 31, 1971):
“To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention – on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God – that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. …The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.”
From Paul Wilhelm von keppler, More Joy (January 1, 1916):
To pray means to relieve one’s heart, to bid care begone, to breathe out misery and distress, to breathe in the pure mountain air and the energy of another world.”