C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"A clergyman once said to me that a railway compartment, if one has it to oneself, is an extremely good place to pray in “because there is just the right amount of distraction.” When I asked him to explain, he said that perfect silence and solitude left one more open to the distractions which come from within, and that moderate amount of external distraction was easier to cope with."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"Meantime, however, we want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are. And if my idea of prayer as “unveiling” is accepted, we have already answered this. It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"We say that we believe God to be omniscient; yet a great deal of prayer seems to consist of giving him information."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"And, perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resort to help them when the great trials come, so those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"As if we said, “In my ignorance I have asked for A, B, and C. But don’t give me them if you foresee that they would in reality be to me either snares or sorrows.”… If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?"

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer