If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Nirvana is something within you. It is not an external reality. No god thunders down from the mountaintop. Just as the great… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
After a time I found that I could almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of its own. I… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant.… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I was a lousy nun. I couldn't do it. I couldn't find God. It wasn't suitable for me. It is suitable for very few… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I have become convinced, through my studies, that the only way to achieve a safe, just and viable world is to live by the… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
We want to create, never mind the leaders or the bishops or chief rabbis or imams, or Popes. We want to create a grassroots… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
If we don't manage to implement the Golden Rule globally, so that we treat all peoples, wherever and whoever they may be, as though… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to “forget” old… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
