Kate Horsley > Quotes

“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: A Novel

“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: A Novel

“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: A Novel

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

“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: A Novel

“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.”
― Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun: A Novel

“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: A Novel