Quotes from Kate Horsley

I would live in a world of Christ-like humans, but not one full of Christians, may God forgive me.

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.

Knowledge often spoils devotion.

I would live in a world of Christ-like humans, but not one full of Christians, may God forgive me.

It is better to listen to a crow that lives in trees than to a learned man who lives only in ideas.

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.

Use words to please, to instruct, to soothe. Then stop speaking.

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.

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.

Power does not willingly give up its place to truth.

Knowledge often spoils devotion.

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.

Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see a kinship between stone chapel and stone circle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I wish that I could thoroughly believe in some creed. I wish that I was ignorant enough to know one truth and discard all others.

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.

But I knew that I would have to live forever with what I did on that night of dying, and that if I chose to be a coward, I would have to repeat such cowardice over and over again in order to justify that it had ever occurred.

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.

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.

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.

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.