Kate Horsley > Quotes

“I would live in a world of Christ-like humans, but not one full of Christians, may God forgive me.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“It is noble to pity a man who is cruel because he is weak, but it is idiotic and dangerous to allow him to have power.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“It is better to listen to a crow that lives in trees than to a learned man who lives only in ideas.”
― Kate Horsley

“Use words to please, to instruct, to soothe. Then stop speaking.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Beauty and perfection do not guarantee grace and fulfillment and are always sacrificed. Life itself seems a ritual of sacrifice, and the world the alter on which plants and animals lay down their own lives for the sustenance of others, and on which we lay our youth, our well-being, our loved ones, and finally our lives. I am an ignorant woman who has sacrificed all of these things but the last, and cannot say for whom or what I perform this unrelenting ritual.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Knowledge often spoils devotion.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“It has puzzled me that men, who claim more and more authority over women, show such fear of those whom they call weak. Perhaps they are hoping that women will come to believe that they need to be protected and dominated, but I cannot imagine any woman being so foolish.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Power does not willingly give up its place to truth.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“I learned regret in the ruins of Tarbfhlaith. I regretted that ambition had ruled my heart instead of affection for my kin. And with the lesson of regret came the gratitude for having life still to move my lips and limbs, and to speak kind words to and embrace those I may not see again on this sweet-smelling earth. I learned that I cannot wait to love what is in my presence, for it or I may well be gone tomorrow. To some, such as Giannon, this lesson poisons the heart with bitterness. But such bitterness has no value and is, in fact, cowardly. For bitterness risks nothing.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see a kinship between stone chapel and stone circle.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“You can call the spirits that live in the pools and trees God’s grace if you like, old man. But if Jesus were from this land he’d be putting milk out for the fairies himself.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“I asked her if affection was not also a strong means of enduring human life. I said that men fear affection because it is stronger than power and one must only have brute force to wield power but must have strength deeper than flesh to wield affection. For with affection comes great sorrow, the sorrow of inevitable death, but also with affection comes joy and peace that power can never give.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Among all the wisdom and facts I learned from Giannon, I also learned the loneliness of incarnation, in which there is inevitably a separation of souls because of the uniqueness of our faces and our experiences. And I learned also the moments when the current of my life joins the current of another life, and I can glimpse for a moment the one flowing body of water we all compose.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Perhaps it is weariness that causes seers not to act on what they see; for whereas the wisdom of the world can be vast, it includes the many futilities. Ideas do not have legs with which to run and hands with which to craft. They are wisps of smoke floating into a universe of pain and ignorance that overwhelm the capacity of one small human body and the mind trapped inside it.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Self-hatred seems to me an evil thing in itself rather than an antidote to evil. If we practice self-hatred, then the sacrifice we make of ourselves and our lives is not sacred, for it is then a gift of something we hate rather than of something that we have nurtured and loved.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“I looked at some old photos Mom took of me and Dad for some photography project or other and tried to see if he listened to me back then, if we were close. But how can you tell? Just because people smile for photos doesn't mean they're happy.”
― Kate Horsley, The American Girl

“the greatest trick of kings is to fool the poor into thinking we have common cause with the rich simply because we live on the same bog. Then the poor get their heads split open in the battles they fight so the rich can keep their wine cellars well stocked.”
― Kate Horsley, The Changeling

“Though they are fine to see, horses frighten me because they are large and weak minded, which is a dangerous thing in horses, men and gods.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Though they are fine to see, horses frighten me because they are large and weak minded, which is a dangerous combination in horses, men, and gods.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“I can’t help it. All those sharp little shards inside me could be answers, but they’ve come loose. Now I see them in fragments that don’t make any more sense than my nightmares do.

Those puzzle pieces are all in there somewhere. I know it.”
― Kate Horsley, The American Girl

“At any other time, I actually wouldn't have minded going on a date with him. After all, he was hot, he was French, and he was a complete emotional train wreck - in other words, my type.”
― Kate Horsley, The American Girl

“I do not understand a man who does not want to know all that he can know. Why would anyone choose ignorance? If he chooses ignorance because he is lay, then he is a fool, for the ignorant are put to hard labor digging and hauling stones for masters who tell them they need no knowledge. If a man must labor from dawn to dusk to avoid a blow on the head and to earn a cup of grain, he has no time to gain knowledge and remains a slave to masters. I think, therefore, that is is a worthy vocation to free a man enough that he can learn who he is and what he is capable of, where he came from and what philosophies steer his life.”
― Kate Horsley

“Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see no difference between stone chapel and stone circle. One encloses and protects the spirit; the other exposes it and joins it with the elements. In both of these places, we conjure the powers that affect and transcend us. We remind ourselves, in both places, that we need oats and milk, but we also need what we cannot see or put in our food bowls.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“But my unwavering love is now given only to our Lord Jesus Christ, for all those whom I loved that were mortal left me in painful grief. I will also say in the confession of faults that I wanted to box the ears of Sister Aillenn, whose dramas of delicate weakness enrage me, for I was never allowed to be weak though I was small. There is no round light behind my head; God forgive me, I sometimes enjoy rage. Neither do I have the character of the martyr, for I love comfortable places where the rain is not cold and the meals are not meagre.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Sometimes we are simply hungry and lonely. That Christ fed fish and bread to the poor... makes me want his company on this dark night. The world is full of immortals but sorely lacking in kindness.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“Words came from her mouth and dispelled my loneliness, even when she was not with me...I began then to know words as immortal things one could see and touch, each having a color and shape like a pebble that never suffers disease or death. I dreamed of bags of polished pebbles; each bag a story; each bag holding one precious jewel among the many pebbles or a dark, black stone that was death's eye.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun

“The Midwife talked to herself now, rather than God, as she walked the road past the Big Bog, wondering if a child born female could truly live her whole life as a male. And if this were possible and offended no god, then perhaps the world had no order other than what was arbitrarily imposed by humans.”
― Kate Horsley, The Changeling

“Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see a kinship between stone chapel and stone circle. One encloses and protects the spirit; the other exposes it and joins it with the elements.”
― Kate Horsley

“Life itself seems a ritual of sacrifice, and the world the altar on which plants and animals lay their own lives for the sustenance of others, and on which we lay our youth, our well-being, our loved ones, and finally our lives...Self-hatred seems to me an evil thing in itself rather than an antidote to evil. If we practice self-hatred, then the sacrifice we make of ourselves and our lives is not sacred, for it is then a gift of something we hate rather than of something that we have nurtured and loved.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun