Kate Horsley

Knowledge often spoils devotion.

I looked at some old photos Mom took of me and Dad for some photography project or other and tried to see if he listened to me back then, if we were close. But how can you tell? Just because people smile for photos doesn't mean they're happy.

It has puzzled me that men, who claim more and more authority over women, show such fear of those whom they call weak. Perhaps they are hoping that women will come to believe that they need to be protected and dominated, but I cannot imagine any woman being so foolish.

I do not understand a man who does not want to know all that he can know. Why would anyone choose ignorance? If he chooses ignorance because he is lay, then he is a fool, for the ignorant are put to hard labor digging and hauling stones for masters who tell them they need no knowledge. If a man must labor from dawn to dusk to avoid a blow on the head and to earn a cup of grain, he has no time to gain knowledge and remains a slave to masters. I think, therefore, that is is a worthy vocation to free a man enough that he can learn who he is and what he is capable of, where he came from and what philosophies steer his life.

Power does not willingly give up its place to truth.

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.

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.

Use words to please, to instruct, to soothe. Then stop speaking.

I wish that I could thoroughly believe in some creed. I wish that I was ignorant enough to know one truth and discard all others.

Life itself seems a ritual of sacrifice, and the world the altar on which plants and animals lay 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...Self-hatred seems to me an evil thing in itself rather than an antidote to evil. If we practice self-hatred, then the sacrifice we make of ourselves and our lives is not sacred, for it is then a gift of something we hate rather than of something that we have nurtured and loved.

the greatest trick of kings is to fool the poor into thinking we have common cause with the rich simply because we live on the same bog. Then the poor get their heads split open in the battles they fight so the rich can keep their wine cellars well stocked.

Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see no difference between stone chapel and stone circle. One encloses and protects the spirit; the other exposes it and joins it with the elements. In both of these places, we conjure the powers that affect and transcend us. We remind ourselves, in both places, that we need oats and milk, but we also need what we cannot see or put in our food bowls.

Though they are fine to see, horses frighten me because they are large and weak minded, which is a dangerous combination in horses, men, and gods.

It is better to listen to a crow that lives in trees than to a learned man who lives only in ideas.

At any other time, I actually wouldn't have minded going on a date with him. After all, he was hot, he was French, and he was a complete emotional train wreck - in other words, my type.