A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty. Karen Armstrong More Quotes by Karen Armstrong More Quotes From Karen Armstrong I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair. Karen Armstrong despair trying fall My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning. Karen Armstrong study way art I think I get from my books what other people get from family or a relationship or from prayer. Karen Armstrong prayer book thinking I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days. Karen Armstrong hate-religion used hate Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others. Karen Armstrong superiors i-can sometimes You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or athletics takes you years before you develop a skill. But if you work at it, practicing daily, you can enable your body to do things that are utterly impossible to an untrained physic. Karen Armstrong skills law years I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university, but I had a series of absolute career disasters and found myself making television programs about the nature of religion and about Christian history and started to discover about other religious traditions, and that was an absolute eye-opener for me. Karen Armstrong eye religious christian Many entire nations are marginalised by the more powerful nations. That is causing imbalance, violence and terror. Women must do their best to introduce another perspective. Karen Armstrong perspective violence powerful Important thing about myth is that it's not just something that you believe, a myth is essentially a program for action. And unless you translate a mythical story, or a doctrine out of the church, into practical action, it just remains incomprehensible. Rather like the rules of a board game which seem very sort of dull and complicated and incomprehensible until you pick up the dice and start to play, when everything falls into place. Karen Armstrong games believe fall The trouble with a lot of modern theology and a lot of modern thinking about God, is that we think of God a sort of being like ourselves, but bigger and better with likes and dislikes similar to our own. Karen Armstrong bigger-and-better likes-and-dislikes thinking Compassion has to become a discipline. It's something that you do. It's no good thinking that you agree with compassion or not, you've just got to do it. Just like it's no good agreeing that it's possible to float, you just have to get into the pool and then you learn that it's possible. Karen Armstrong discipline compassion thinking God is not good, or wise, or intelligent anyway that we know. So, people like Maimonides in the Jewish tradition, Eboncina in the Muslim tradition, Thomas Aquinas in the Christian tradition, insisted that we couldn't even say that God existed because our concept of existence is far too limited and they would have been horrified by the ease with which we talk about God today. Karen Armstrong intelligent christian wise You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner. Karen Armstrong approach differences mind We constantly have ideas and experiences that go beyond what we can say or know. Most often these are expressed in art, in painting, in music. Music, everyday confronts us with a form of knowing that doesn't depend on words. Karen Armstrong knowing ideas art And so, one of the reasons why I started my Charter for Compassion, was to bring the Golden Rule back to the center of religion and morality and not put other's secondary goals, less demand goals, into the forefront. Karen Armstrong compassion goal reason-why Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at the present time. And in order to counter this, we need to make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a dynamic force in our world. Karen Armstrong our-world voice order We can't say what God is, and until the modern period, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians in the three God religions all knew that. They insisted that we have no idea what we meant when we said that God was good, or wise, or intelligent. Karen Armstrong intelligent christian wise Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain. Karen Armstrong quartets strings pain I had tried, as I thought as a nun, to open myself to God and God seemed totally uninterested in me. The heavens remained closed and opaque. I now realize, of course, that I had a very, very inadequate idea of God. I was expecting clouds to part, a little sort of whisper in my ear, and of course, that's not what God is. God is not another being; we are talking about something much more profound. Karen Armstrong clouds talking ideas I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to make it. It's very difficult to be a nun, or to live a religious life. It's very difficult to live a life of total celibacy or a life without any possessions or material responsibilities at all, or in total obedience to somebody else, and remain a mature whole human being, and I knew that I wasn't going to be one of those. Karen Armstrong mature responsibility religious
