Sacred Nature Quotes

“By rationalizing nature and confining God to the heavens, we have so drastically reduced the divine that for many it has become either incredible or imperceptible. At the same time, in our industrialized societies, we have been systematically destroying the natural order.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Instead of seeing "Him" confined to the distant heavens, we need to look to this older--and still widespread--understanding of the divine as a inexpressible but dynamic inner presence that flows through all things.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“when we listen to the scriptures during the liturgy, Denys explained, we should reverently deny the names they give to God, finding each one inadequate, and fall into a humbled silence in the presence of the ineffable.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Si te consideras sabio, aseguraban, ¡puedes dar prácticamente por seguro que no lo eres!”
― Karen Armstrong, Naturaleza sagrada: Cómo podemos recuperar nuestro vínculo con el mundo natural

“«He determinado para la luna fases, hasta que se pone como la palma seca. No le está bien al sol alcanzar a la luna, ni a la noche adelantar al día: cada uno navega en su propia órbita»”
― Karen Armstrong, Naturaleza sagrada: Cómo podemos recuperar nuestro vínculo con el mundo natural

“Por lo tanto, para Abenarabi, el mundo natural es el «aliento del Misericordioso», y todo cuanto hay en él es una expresión del suspiro divino.”
― Karen Armstrong, Naturaleza sagrada: Cómo podemos recuperar nuestro vínculo con el mundo natural

“En el siglo X a. C., los sacerdotes brahmanes de la India idearon una prueba a la que daban el nombre de Brahmodya y que todos nosotros podríamos tomar hoy como modelo. El objetivo consistía en hallar una fórmula verbal susceptible de definir el Brahmán, con lo que, al forzar el idioma hasta las últimas consecuencias y observar que en última instancia se desmoronaba, los participantes cobraban aguda conciencia de lo inefable.”
― Karen Armstrong, Naturaleza sagrada: Cómo podemos recuperar nuestro vínculo con el mundo natural

“Coleridge did not experience a deity confined to heaven, like the God of Newton or Descartes; instead, like nearly all the great poets, mystics and philosophers we have met in this book, he sees the divine as inseparable from nature.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“If we want to halt the environmental crisis, we need first, like Coleridge, to seek a silent receptiveness to the natural world, bringing it into our lives little by little every day.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“we must go beyond the secular humanism that formed the anthropocentric ethos of the Enlightenment. We should develop an anthropocosmic mentality that unites the individual with the community and preserves the harmony between the human species and the non-human world.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“May nobody wish harm to any single creature, out of anger or hatred! Let us cherish all creatures, as a mother her only child! May our loving thoughts fill the whole world, above, below, across—without limit; a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, Unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity.[”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Let all beings be happy! Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be born—may they all be perfectly happy! Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“note of the damage we inflict upon our own and other species. In the West, mindfulness has become a popular spiritual exercise but is usually geared towards our own well-being. Perhaps we should extend it to cultivate a Jain-like awareness of the pain we inflict daily both on other humans and on nature.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“The profound empathy of the Jains asks us to realise that the world we live in is in pain and to take”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“All too often, when we realise what damage we have done to our environment, our response is fear—and fear can be paralysing, quelling any creative initiative to address the problem. We need to learn how to revere nature in a positive, life-”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“In the West we rather glorify irreverence, regarding it as a courageous challenge to the establishment and a mark of individuality, but it can be pure egotism.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Thus in Confucianism reverence for humanity and the natural world were inextricably combined.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Perhaps we can find a particular poem or text and recite it once a day to express our gratitude to nature. After all, given the fragility of the planet, we can no longer take it for granted.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“In the modern world we rarely express the gratitude that our ancestors felt for the natural rhythms of nature. The ancient Egyptians did not take the natural order as a given but celebrated it as divine every day. For them the rising and setting of the sun was”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“The bed-rock message of the Qur’an is that it is wrong to build a private fortune and good to share your wealth with the weak and vulnerable.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“Muslims are far more impressed by the regular rhythms of nature than by the supernatural miracles celebrated in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, because in the Qur’an the natural order is the revelation of divine power and wisdom.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“we should consider three things: how little we know; how frequently we fail in kindness to other beings; and how limited are our desires and yearnings, which so often begin and end in our self.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“We must re-form our attitude to nature and that will entail sacrifice. We can no longer board aeroplanes, drive our cars, or burn coal with our former insouciance. If we want a viable world, we must awaken within ourselves a new reverence for nature, just as the sacrificer learned to regard an unremarkable sheep as sacred. We cannot save our planet unless we undergo a radical change of mind and heart,”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“by the eighteenth century the people of Europe and America had achieved such astonishing success in science and technology that they began to discount myth as false and primitive.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“For most of human history, there were two ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge about the world: mythos and logos.[1] Both were essential to comprehending reality: they were not in opposition to one another but complementary”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

“And, crucially, we need good myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, because unless there is a spiritual revolution that challenges the destructiveness of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.”
― Karen Armstrong, Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World