#religion

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#good #heart #religion #religion

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion. ↗

— Paul Cezanne

#ask #consolation #find #i #me

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#death #devastating #disgraceful #dying #helpless

There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#bad #cooking #forms #just #religion

After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#awful #book #convent #disgusted #felt

All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#how #joyfully #kindly #live #midst

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people? ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#disapprove #having #how #i #important

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#afterlife #am #conditions #ego #eternally

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#ego #egotism #endorse #give #identity

When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#becomes #dreams #everything #fantasies #our dreams