A World of Prayer

Tibet

 

Cambodia

On Prayer
… All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
- Czeslaw Milosz, Polish Author

Sri Lanka

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when,
whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

United States

 

Peshawar, Pakistan

 

Rome, Italy

One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.
- G. E. Lessing, German writer and philosopher

Amritsar, India

 

Tibet

 

United States

Listening is the beginning of prayer.
- Mother Teresa

Yugoslavia

 

India

Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere,
there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage,
and you will understand that prayer is an education.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Kashmir

 

China

 

Afghanistan

…there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation.
This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him…
there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray,
I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years,
forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity
only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful,
benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.
- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Kuchi Nomads Pray in Afghanistan

 

Japan

To be present is to be prayerful.
- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Burma

 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

Brazil

Prayer is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.
- Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople

India

Thousands of Muslims in Orange County, California,
came together to pray in Angels Stadium to observe Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic
holiday celebrating the culmination of the annual pilgrimage, Hajj,
which brings together millions of Muslims to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
- 10/27/2012

To Fly

To read is to fly:
it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view
over  wide terrains of history,
human variety, ideas, shared experience and the
fruits of many inquiries.
- A. C. Grayling

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.
They are the destination, and the journey.
They are home.
- Anna Quindlen

Germany

India 

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something,
learned something, become a better person.
Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on…
Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.
- Nora Ephron

India

Everywhere I go in the world, I see young and old, rich and poor, reading books.  
Whether readers are engaged in the sacred or the secular, they are, for a time,
transported to  another world.

Thailand

India

Reading a good book is a universal activity, and people read while they do
just about everything else, and that includes reading while playing the
piano, which my sister used to do.

Sri Lanka

At one magical instant in your early childhood,
the page of a book–that string of confused, alien ciphers–shivered into meaning.
Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened.
You became, irrevocably, a reader.
- Alberto Manguel

Burma

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly,
into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Lourdes, France

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the
most patient of teachers. 
- Charles William Eliot

Italy

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
- James Russell Lowell

India

We read to know we are not alone. 
- C.S. Lewis

Tibet

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
- Jorge Luis Borges

China

Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still,
retreat or fly into the future.
- Jim Bishop

Thailand

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book,
and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will
lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive
- all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

India

Kashmir

Korea

We live for books.
-Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 

Canada

Turkey

Afghanistan

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
- Victor Hugo

Italy 

Yemen

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the
most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
- Wisława Szymborska
1996 Nobel Prize in Literature

India

Cuba

Japan

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
- Rene Descartes

Lost in Thought

 

 

Bagan, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

 

 

 A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought.  There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. 
- Victor Hugo

 

  

 

 

 

 Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

 

 Never be afraid to sit a while and think. 
- Lorraine Hansberry,  A Raisin in the Sun

 

 

 

 

 Varanasi, India

 

 

 

 

 

Afghanistan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Cambodia

 

 

 

 

 Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen;

even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. 
-Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508

 

 

 

 

Canada 

 

 

 

 

New York City 

 

 

 

 

 

South Korea 

 

 

 

 

 

Uzbekistan 

 

 

 

 

 

United States

 

 

 

 

China

 

 

 

 

Honduras

 

 

 

 

Ahmed Shah Massoud, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

 

 

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. 
- Voltaire

 

 

 

 

  Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

 

 

 

Jammu & Kashmir 

 

 

 

 

Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Guernica and the Evolution of Consciousness, Picasso

 

 

Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States

 

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? 
Winnie the Pooh,  A.A. Milne