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is a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down.

I do not pray. . . . I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men. . . . Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility.

is a disease of the will just as religion is a disease of the intellect.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. Simone Weil

is, along with hope, always a reaching-out for coincidences.

All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences. Eric Hoffer

is always, regardless of the subject, a prayer for a miracle, a breaking of the law of the earth, essentially, a prayer that two times two not equal four.

Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four. Ivan Turgenev

is an act in which we kneel down not to regain belief (like pascal) but to get rid of our belief... to let the kneeling take the burden of the praying over for you. To acquire some breathing space.

Today, however, in our fidelity to a cultural life-style, we prefer to turn the Pascalean logic around: 'You believe too much, too directly' You find your belief too oppressing in its raw immediacy' Then kneel down, act as if you believe, and you will get rid of your belief you will no longer have to believe yourself, since your belief will be objectified in your act of praying!' That is to say, what if one kneels down and prays not so much to regain one's own belief but, on the opposite, to get rid of one's beliefs, of their over-proximity, to acquire a breathing space of a minimal distance towards them' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' : 27)

is an act which -with both hands pressed against the other -attempts to play against the fissure between activity and passivity.

This is more clearly exemplified in praying with both hands pressed against the other or simply joined together. Ichikawa observes: In many religions, the reason that one closes his eyes and joins his hands together when he prays is because he attempts to reach by way of this activity a certain pure state that is without the fissure between activity and passivity, between interiority and exteriority, and between subject and object. (P. 25) (Nagatomo 1986 : 382)

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance. Victor Hugo

prayer, n.All

prayer