Karen Armstrong Quotes

If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

These last few days I've felt Godless. I've felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he's so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns-all silly and useless.

I feel very bad about getting things wrong.

I thought I knew there was a God. I always acknowledged that, but at the same time, I didn't live by those laws.

I don't like the feeling of 'I didn't do enough.'

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn't go back.

Losing my faith was the most spiritual thing that ever happened to me.

I never slept when I lost. I'd see the sun come up without ever having closed my eyes. I'd see those base hits over and over and they would drive me crazy.

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.

I'm a hopeless mother; a hopeless wife; I have to try harder. I'm just a pathetic case history, really.

It puzzled me that other people hadn't found out, too. God was gone. We were younger. We had reached past him. Why couldn't they see it? It still puzzles me.

I walk around feeling a sort of existential guilt all the time; and honestly for me this house is a way of feeling less guilty about the universe.

I feel I let my team down today. My heart is bleeding for everybody else. I felt like I should have gotten it done today. That's how it is. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

I felt terrible when I went to Roma because I hadn't fulfilled the expectations of the Florentines.

I hate disappointing people and letting people down.

I was never cut out to be a mother - I was no good.

I have no problems with failures, I'm afraid of failing within myself. At times when I know I did something wrong, I don't sleep that night. I'm scared of facing myself.

Some worry endlessly over missions that were missed, or marriages that did not turn out, or babies that did not arrive, or children that seem lost, or dreams unfulfilled, or because age limits what they can do. I do not think it pleases the Lord when we worry because we think we never do enough or that what we do is never good enough....Some needlessly carry a heavy burden of guilt which could be removed through confession and repentance.

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?

That's not a real answer.' Says who?' Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.' Clowns.

Boy, I feel more and more undeserving each moment !!

I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction.