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Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.

-C. S. Lewis

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Ambition! We Must Be

C. S. Lewis

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Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.

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You Ask Whether I Have Ever Been In Love: Fool As I Am, I Am Not Such A Fool As That. But If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business. But Though I Have No Personal Experience Of The Things They Call Love, I Have What Is Better - The Experience Of Sappho, Of Euripides, Of Catallus, Of Shakespeare, Of Spenser, Of Austen, Of Bronte, Of Anyone Else I Have Read.

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him. Nobody Can Always Have Devout Feelings: And Even If We Could, Feelings Are Not What God Principally Cares About. Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear.

The Story Does What No Theorem Can Quite Do. It May Not Be "like Real Life" In The Superficial Sense: But It Sets Before Us An Image Of What Reality May Well Be Like At Some More Central Region.

The Action Of Pity Leaps Quicker Than Light From The Highest Place To The Lowest To Bring Healing And Joy, Whatever The Cost To Itself. It Changes Darkness Into Light And Evil Into Good. But It Will Not, At The Cunning Tears Of Hell, Impose On Good The Tyranny Of Evil. Every Disease That Submits To A Cure Shall Be Cured: But We Will Not Call Blue Yellow To Please Those Who Insist On Having Jaundice, Nor Make A Midden Of The World's Garden For The Sake Of Some Who Cannot Abide The Smell Of Roses.

I Have Seen Landscapes . . . Which, Under A Particular Light, Make Me Feel That At Any Moment A Giant Might Raise His Head Over The Next Ridge.

We All Appear As Dunces When Feigning An Interest In Things We Care Nothing About.

Christianity Tells People To Repent And Promises Them Forgiveness. It Therefore Has Nothing (as Far As I Know) To Say To People Who Do Not Know They Have Done Anything To Repent Of And Who Do Not Feel That They Need Forgiveness.

To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.

Christian Theology Can Fit In Science, Art, Morality, And The Sub-christian Religious. The Scientific Point Of View Cannot Fit Any Of These Things, Not Even Science Itself.

We Have Discovered That The Scheme Of 'outlawing War' Has Made War More Like An Outlaw Without Making It Less Frequent And That To Banish The Knight Does Not Alleviate The Suffering Of The Peasant.

At Least He Went On Saying This Till Aslan Had Loaded Him Up With Three Dwarfs, One Dryad, Two Rabbits, And A Hedgehog, That Steadied Him A Bit.

In The Truest Sense, Christian Pilgrims Have The Best Of Both Worlds. We Have Joy Whenever This World Reminds Us Of The Next, And We Take Solace Whenever It Does Not.

Christianity Seems At First To Be All About Morality, All About Duties And Rules And Guilt And Virtue, Yet It Leads You On, Out Of All That, Into Something Beyond. One Has A Glimpse Of A Country Where They Do Not Talk Of Those Things, Except Perhaps As A Joke. Every One There Is Filled Full With What We Should Call Goodness As A Mirror Is Filled With Light. But They Do Not Call It Goodness. They Do Not Call It Anything. They Are Not Thinking Of It. They Are Too Busy Looking At The Source From Which It Comes.

You Must Make Your Choice: Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool, You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us. He Did Not Intend To.

Things Always Work According To Their Nature.

To What Will You Look For Help If You Will Not Look To That Which Is Stronger Than Yourself?

The Difference [god's] Timelessness Makes Is That This Now (which Slips Away From You Even As You Say The Word Now) Is For Him Infinite.

The Christian Idea Of 'putting On Christ' Is The Whole Of Christianity.

Through Pride The Devil Became The Devil. Pride Leads To Every Vice, It's The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

Our Prayers For Others Flow More Easily Than Those For Ourselves. This Shows We Are Made To Live By Charity.

When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place [if We Anticipate And Look For It, Rather Than Wallow In Our 'supposed Loss'. It Can Be Helpful To Think Of The Loss Of That Blessing As Simply Necessary To Make Way For Another Different Blessing].

I Don't Want Him To Live Forever, And I Know That He's Not Going To Live Forever Whether I Want Him To Or Not.

Devils Are Depicted With Bats' Wings And Good Angels With Birds' Wings, Not Because Anyone Holds That Moral Deterioration Would Be Likely To Turn Feathers Into Membrane, But Because Most Men Like Birds Better Than Bats.

Think Of A Country Where People Were Admired For Running Away In Battle, Or Where A Man Felt Proud Of Double-crossing All The People Who Had Been Kindest To Him. You Might Just As Well Try To Imagine A Country Where Two And Two Made Five.

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

This Is The Land Of Narnia,' Said The Faun, 'where We Are Now; All That Lies Between The Lamp-post And The Great Castle Of Cair Paravel On The Eastern Sea.

Surely You Know That If A Man Can't Be Cured Of Churchgoing, The Next Best Thing Is To Send Him All Over The Neighbourhood Looking For The Church That "suits" Him Until He Becomes A Taster Or Connoisseur Of Churches.

It Is Only Our Bad Temper That We Put Down To Being Tired Or Worried Or Hungry; We Put Our Good Temper Down To Ourselves.

I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer.

The World Does Not Need More Christian Literature. What It Needs Is More Christians Writing Good Literature.

We Are Not Living In A World Where All Roads Are Radii If A Circle And Where All, If Followed Long Enough, Will Therefore Draw Gradually Nearer And Finally Meet At The Centre: Rather In A World Where Every Road, After A Few Miles, Forks Into Two, And Each Of Those Into Two Again, And At Each Fork You Must Make A Decision.

We 'have All We Want' Is A Terrible Saying When 'all' Does Not Include God. We Find God An Interruption. As St. Augustine Says Somewhere, 'god Wants To Give Us Something, But Cannot, Because Our Hands Are Full - There's Nowhere For Him To Put It.'

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.

The Essence Of Religion, In My View, Is The Thirst For An End Higher Than Natural Ends.

The First Fact In The History Of Christendom Is A Number Of People Who Say They Have Seen The Resurrection.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law: And Without Good Men You Cannot Have A Good Society.

It Matters Enormously If I Alienate Anyone From The Truth.

Pride, On The Other Hand, Is The Mother Of All Sins, And The Original Sin Of Lucifer.... An Instrument Strung, But Preferring To Play Itself Because It Thinks It Knows The Tune Better Than The Musician

So That The One Road For Which We Now Need God's Leadership Most Of All Is A Road God, In His Own Nature, Has Never Walked. But Suppose God Became A Man... He Could Surrender His Will, Suffer And Die, Because He Was A Man.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

The Man In Christ Rose Again, Not Only The God.

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.

Nothing Which Is At All Times And In Every Way Agreeable To Us Can Have Objective Reality. It Is Of The Very Nature Of The Real That It Should Have Sharp Corners And Rough Edges, That It Should Be Resistant, Should Be Itself. Dream-furniture Is The Only Kind On Which You Never Stub Your Toes Or Bang Your Knee.

The Very Condition Of Having Friends Is That We Should Want Something Else Besides Friends. Where The Truthful Answer To The Question "do You See The Same Truth?" Would Be "i See Nothing And I Don't Care About The Truth; I Only Want A Friend," No Friendship Can Arise - Though Affection Of Course May. There Would Be Nothing For The Friendship To Be About; And Friendship Must Be About Something, Even If It Were Only An Enthusiasm For Dominoes Or White Mice. Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.

For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.

A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.

Screwtape Letters

Besides Being Complicated, Reality, In My Experience, Is Usually Odd. It Is Not Neat, Not Obvious, Not What You Expect.

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Them.

When You Invite A Middle-aged Moralist To Address You, I Suppose I Must Conclude That You Have A Taste For Middle-aged Moralizing.

When I'm Older I'll Understand" Said Lucy, " I Am Older And I Don't Think I Want To Understand", Replied Edmund

Nothing Is More Likely To Destroy A Species Or A Nation Than A Determination To Survive At All Costs

Ah, Poor Pole. It's Been To Much For Her, This Last Bit. Turned Her Head, I Shouldn't Wonder. She's Beginning To See Things.

He Thinks Great Folly, Child,' Said Aslan. "this World Is Bursting With Life For These Few Days Because The Song With Which I Called It Into Life Still Hangs In The Air And Rumbles In The Ground. It Will Not Be So For Long. But I Cannot Tell That To This Old Sinner, And I Cannot Comfort Him Either; He Has Made Himself Unable To Hear My Voice. If I Spoke To Him, He Would Hear Only Growlings And Roarings. Oh, Adam's Son, How Cleverly You Defend Yourself Against All That Might Do You Good!

You're A Mere Chick. I Remember You When You Were A Egg. Don't Come Trying To Teach Me, Sir. Crabs And Crumpets!

If You Picture Time As A Straight Line Along Which We Have To Travel, Then You Must Think Of God As The Whole Page On Which The Line Is Drawn.

I Don't Pray So That I Can Change God. I Pray So That God Can Change Me.

At The End Of All Things, The Blessed Will Say, 'we Never Lived Anywhere But In Heaven.'

I Cannot Speak For The Way God Deals With Others; I Only Know How He Deals With Me Personally.

There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.

God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks To Us In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains.

Why You Fool, It's The Educated Reader Who Can Be Gulled. All Our Difficulty Comes With The Others. When Did You Meet A Workman Who Believes The Papers? He Takes It For Granted That They're All Propaganda And Skips The Leading Articles....he's Our Problem. We Have To Recondition Him. But The Educated Public, The People Who Read The High-brow Weeklies, Don't Need Reconditioning. They're All Right Already. They'll Believe Anything.

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

To Have Faith In Christ Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice.

Don't Let Your Happiness Depend On Something You May Lose.

For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

Affection Would Not Be Affection If It Was Loudly And Frequently Expressed; To Produce It In Public Is Like Getting Your Household Furniture Out For A Move. It Did Very Well In Its Place, But It Looks Shabby Or Tawdry Or Grotesque In The Sunshine.

Man Approaches God Most Nearly When He Is In One Sense Least Like God. For What Can Be More Unlike Than Fullness And Need, Sovereignty And Humility, Righteousness And Penitence, Limitless Power And A Cry For Help?

Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth. What You Now Call The Free Play Of Inquiry Has Neither More Nor Less To Do With The Ends For Which Intelligence Was Given You Than Masturbation Has To Do With Marriage.

Until You Have Given Up Yourself To Him, You Will Not Have A Real Self.

But Probably Every Age Gets, Within Certain Limits, The Science It Deserves.

Giant Wimbleweather Burst Into One Of Those Not Very Intelligent Laughs To Which The Nicer Sort Of Giants Are So Liable. He Checked Himself At Once And Looked As Grace As A Turnip By The Time Reepicheep Discovered Where The Noise Came From.

100 Per Cent Of Us Die, And The Percentage Cannot Be Increased.

People Who Know A Lot Of The Same Things Can Hardly Help Talking About Them.

Submit To Death, Death Of Your Ambitions And Favorite Wishes Every Day And Death Of Your Whole Body In The End: Submit With Every Fiber Of Your Being, And You Will Find Eternal Life. Keep Back Nothing. Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Be Really Yours. Nothing In You That Has Not Died Will Ever Be Raised From The Dead. . . Look To Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

What Do They Teach Them At These Schools?

God Is The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On.

We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.

The Claim To Equality, Outside Of The Strictly Political Field, Is Made Only By Those Who Feel Themselves To Be In Some Way Inferior.

It Now Seemed To Me That All My Other Guesses Had Been Only Self-pleasing Dreams Spun Out Of My Wishes, But Now I Was Awake.

I Believe Buddhism To Be A Simplification Of Hinduism And Islam To Be A Simplification Of Xianity.

...the Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal, Or Two Friends Talking Over A Pint Of Beer, Or A Man Alone Reading A Book That Interests Him..." - C.s. Lewis: Weight Of Glory

We Shall Not Be Well So Long As We Love And Admire Anything More Than We Love And Admire God.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai.

You Asked For A Loving God: You Have One... The Consuming Fire Himself, The Love That Made The Worlds, Persistent As The Artist's Love For His Work And Despotic As A Man's Love For A Dog, Provident And Venerable As A Father's Love For A Child, Jealous, Inexorable, Exacting As Love Between The Sexes. How This Should Be, I Do Not Know: It Passes Reason To Explain Why Any Creatures, Not To Say Creatures Such As We, Should Have A Value So Prodigious In Their Creator's Eyes.

I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.

A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.

I Have Read The Aeneid Through More Often Than I Have Read Any Long Poem.

You Can't Just Go On Being A Good Egg. You Must Either Hatch Or Go Bad!

You And I Who Still Enjoy Fairy Tales Have Less Reason To Wish Actual Childhood Back. We Have Kept Its Pleasures And Added Some Grown-up Ones As Well.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off His Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

It Would Seem That Our Lord Finds Our Desires Not Too Strong, But Too Weak.

Spying On People By Magic Is The Same As Spying On Them In Any Other Way.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

But Suppose You Struggle Through To The Good And Find That It Also Is Dreadful? How If Food Itself Turns Out To Be The Very Thing You Can't Eat, And Home The Very Place You Can't Live, And Your Very Comforter The Person Who Makes You Uncomfortable? Then, Indeed, There Is No Rescue Possible: The Last Card Has Been Played.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

Please Will You Do My Job For Me.

Man Has Got To Take Charge Of Man.... Then Real Education, Including Pre-natal Education. By Real Education I Mean One That Has No 'take-it-or-leave-it' Nonsense. A Real Education Makes The Patient What It Wants Infallibly: Whatever He Or His Parents Try To Do About It. Of Course, It'll Have To Be Mainly Psychological At First. But We'll Get On To Biochemical Conditioning Int He End And Direct Manipulation Of The Brain.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

I Daren't Come And Drink," Said Jill. Then You Will Die Of Thirst," Said The Lion. Oh Dear!" Said Jill, Coming Another Step Nearer."i Suppose I Must Go And Look For Another Stream Then." There Is No Other Stream," Said The Lion.

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

Holiness Is Irresistible. If Even 10% Of The World's Population Had It The Whole World Would Be Converted And Happy Before The Year's End.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe Is A Price Worth Paying For Free Will--that Is, For Making A Live World In Which Creatures Can Do Real Good Or Harm And Something Of Real Importance Of Real Importance Can Happen, Instead Of A Toy World Which Only Moves When He Pulls The Strings--then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

Has This World Been So Kind To You That You Should Leave With Regret? There Are Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

One Flesh. Or If You Prefer, One Ship. The Starboard Engine Has Gone. I, The Port Engine, Must Chug Along Somehow Till We Make Harbour. Or Rather, Till The Journey Ends.

My Own View Is That The Churches Should Frankly Recognise That The Majority Of The British People Are Not Christians And, Therefore, Cannot Be Expected To Live Christian Lives. There Ought To Be Two Distinct Kinds Of Marriage: One Governed By The State With Rules Enforced On All Citizens, The Other Governed By The Church With Rules Enforced By Her On Her Own Members." --about The Only Statement I Agree With In This Book

One Is Given Strength To Bear What Happens To One, But Not The 100 And 1 Different Things That Might Happen.

They Were Really Getting Quite Fond Of Their Strange Pet And Hoped That Aslan Would Allow Them To Keep It. The Cleverer Ones Were Quite Sure By Now That At Least Some Of The Noises Which Came Out Of His Mouth Had A Meaning. They Christened Him Brandy Because He Made That Noise So Often.

If Minds Are Wholly Dependent On Brains And Brains On Biochemistry, And Biochemistry (in The Long Run) On The Meaningless Flux Of The Atoms, I Cannot Understand How The Thought Of Those Minds Should Have Any More Significance Than The Sound Of The Wind In The Trees.

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

What We Call Man's Power Over Nature Turns Out To Be A Power Exercised By Some Men Over Other Men With Nature As Its Instrument.

Few Men Looked On Her Without Becoming, In A Certain Fashion, Her Lovers. But It Was The Kind Of Love That Made Them Not Less True, But Truer, To Their Own Wives.

The Only Moral That Is Of Any Value Is That Which Arises Inevitably From The Whole Cast Of The Author's Mind.

All Right, Beautiful. You've Got Me Tied Down To This Stone Table, And There's A Knife In Your Hand That Says You Get To Rule Narnia For Another Hundred Years. So Maybe I Die, And Winter Goes On. Maybe The Hunger And The Darkness And The Fear Never End. But As Long As The Children Believe In Me, I Know That Aslan Will Live Again. I, The Great Lion, Son Of The Emperor Over The Sea, Will Live Again And -- Aaaaauugh!!

Odd, The Way The Less The Bible Is Read The More It Is Translated

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. The Smallest Good Act Today Is The Capture Of A Strategic Point From Which, A Few Months Later, You May Be Able To Go On To Victories You Never Dreamed Of. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.

Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.

We Are Half-hearted Creatures, Fooling About With Drink And Sex And Ambition When Infinite Joy Is Offered Us.

[the Witch] Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor’s Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Start Working Backwards.

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World. The Wartime Posters Told Us That Careless Talk Costs Lives. It Is Equally True That Careless Lives Cost Talk. Our Careless Lives Set The Outer World Talking; And We Give Them Grounds For Talking In A Way That Throws Doubt On The Truth Of Christianity Itself.

The Command "be Ye Prfect" Is Not Idealistic Gas. Nor Is It A Command To Do The Impossible. He Said (in The Bible) That We Were "gods" And He Is Going To Make Good His Words. He Will Make Us Into A God Or Goddess, A Dazzling, Radiant, Immortal Creature...a Bright Stainless Mirror Which Reflects Back To God Perfectly.

He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Wouldn't It Be Dreadful If Some Day In Our Own World, At Home, Men Start Going Wild Inside, Like The Animals Here, And Still Look Like Men, So That You'd Never Know Which Were Which.

Don't Judge A Man By Where He Is, Because You Don't Know How Far He Has Come.

If You Asked Twenty Good Men To-day What They Thought The Highest Of The Virtues, Nineteen Of Them Would Reply, Unselfishness. But If You Asked Almost Any Of The Great Christians Of Old He Would Have Replied, Love - You See What Has Happened? A Negative Term Has Been Substituted For A Positive, And This Is Of More Than Philological Importance. The Negative Ideal Of Unselfishness Carries With It The Suggestion Not Primarily Of Securing Good Things For Others, But Of Going Without Them Ourselves, As If Our Abstinence And Not Their Happiness Was The Important Point.

All The Time The Joke Is That The Word "mine" In Its Fully Possessive Sense Cannot Be Uttered By A Human Being About Anything. In The Long Run Either [satan] Or God Will Say "mine" Of Each Thing That Exists, And Specially Of Each Man.

Kids Like Us Don't Often Have The Chance Of Meeting A Great Warrior Like You. Would You Have A Little Fencing Match With Me? It Would Be Frightfully Decent.

Man Does Not Have A Soul. He Is A Soul. He Has A Body.

A World Of Nice People, Content In Their Own Niceness, Looking No Further, Turned Away From God, Would Be Just As Desperately In Need Of Salvation As A Miserable World-and Might Be Even More Difficult To Save.

We Are...a Divine Work Of Art, Something That God Is Making...something With Which He Will Not Be Satisfied Until It Has A Certain Character.

Slowly, Quietly, Like Snow-flakes—like The Small Flakes That Come When It Is Going To Snow All Night —little Flakes Of Me, My Impressions, My Selections, Are Settling Down On The Image Of Her. The Real Shape Wil Be Quite Hidden In The End.

Looking For God-or Heaven-by Exploring Space Is Like Reading Or Seeing All Shakespeare's Plays In The Hope That You Will Find Shakespeare As One Of The Characters.

A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.

Poetry Most Often Communicates Emotions, Not Directly, But By Creating Imaginatively The Grounds For Those Emotions. It Therefore Communicates Something More Than The Emotion; Only By Means Of That Something More Does It Communicate The Emotion At All.

For Christianity Is A Fighting Religion. It Thinks God Has Made The World- That Space And Time, Heat And Cold, And All The Colors And Tastes, And All The Animals And Vegetables, Are Things That God 'made Up Out Of His Head' As A Man Makes Up A Story. But It Also Thinks That A Great Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And That God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

We Do Not Come To God As Bad People Trying To Become Good People; We Come As Rebels To Lay Down Our Arms.

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, The First Step Is To Realize One Is Proud. Nothing Can Be Done Before It.

What One Must Not Do Is To Rule Out The Supernatural As The One Impossible Explanation.

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing That God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy...whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want. Once More, We Are Embarrassed By The Intolerable Compliment, By Too Much Love, Not Too Little.

If I Find In Myself A Desire Which No Experience In This World Can Satisfy, The Most Probable Explanation Is That I Was Made For Another World.

Wrong Will Be Right, When Aslan Comes In Sight, At The Sound Of His Roar, Sorrows Will Be No More, When He Bares His Teeth, Winter Meets Its Death, And When He Shakes His Mane, We Shall Have Spring Again.

Reality, In Fact, Is Always Something You Couldn't Have Guessed. That's One Of The Reasons I Believe Christianity. It's A Religion You Couldn't Have Guessed.

Aslan: You Doubt Your Value. Don't Run From Who You Are.

A Man Can Eat His Dinner Without Understanding Exactly How Food Nourishes Him. A Man Can Accept What Christ Has Done Without Knowing How It Works: Indeed, He Certainly Would Not Know How It Works Until He Has Accepted It.

He Has Room For People With Very Little Sense, But He Wants Everyone To Use What Sense They Have.

They Were Pretty Tired By Now Of Course; But Not What I’d Call Bitterly Tired – Only Slow And Feeling Very Dreamy And Tired As One Does When One Is Coming To The End Of A Long Day In The Open.

But I Will Not Tell You How Long Or Short The Way Will Be; Only That It Lies Across A River. But Do Not Fear That, For I Am The Great Bridge Builder.

He Who Has Not Forgiven An Enemy Has Never Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom, Humility The Road To Pleasure, Unity The Road To Personality.

But As For Aslan Himself, The Beavers And The Children Didn't Know What To Do Or Say When They Saw Him. People Who Have Not Been In Narnia Sometimes Think That A Thing Cannot Be Good And Terrible At The Same Time. If The Children Had Ever Thought So, They Were Cured Of It Now. For When They Tried To Look At Aslan's Face They Just Caught A Glimpse Of The Golden Mane And The Great, Royal, Solemn, Overwhelming Eyes; And Then They Found They Couldn't Look At Him And Went All Trembly.

Chronological Snobbery Is The Uncritical Acceptance Of The Intellectual Climate Common To Our Own Age And The Assumption That Whatever Has Gone Out Of Date Is On That Account Discredited. You Must Find Why It Went Out Of Date. Was It Ever Refuted (and If So By Whom, Where, And How Conclusively), Or Did It Merely Die Away As Fashions Do? If The Latter, This Tells Us Nothing About Its Truth Or Falsehood.

At A Well In A Yard They Met A Man Who Was Beating A Boy. The Stick Burst Into A Flower In The Mans Hand. He Tried To Drop It, But It Stuck To His Hand. His Arm Became A Branch, His Body The Trunk Of A Tree, His Feet Took Root.

When You Come To Knowing God, The Initiative Lies On His Side. If He Does Not Show Himself, Nothing You Can Do Will Enable You To Find Him. And, In Fact, He Shows Much More Of Himself To Some People Than To Others—not Because He Has Favourites, But Because It Is Impossible For Him To Show Himself To A Man Whose Whole Mind And Character Are In The Wrong Condition. Just As Sunlight, Though It Has No Favourites, Cannot Be Reflected In A Dusty Mirror As Clearly As In A Clean One.

The Perfect Church Service Would Be One We Were Almost Unaware Of. Our Attention Would Have Been On God.

Anyone Who Endeavors To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened. You Are Embarking On Something That Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

If We Only Have The Will To Walk, Then God Is Pleased With Our Stumbles.

A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line.

Prostitutes Are In No Danger Of Finding Their Present Life So Satisfactory That They Cannot Turn To God: The Proud, The Avaricious, The Self-righteous, Are In That Danger.

Faith In Christ Is The Only Thing To Save You From Despair.

The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.

Precisely Because We Cannot Predict The Moment, We Must Be Ready At All Moments.

The Salvation Of A Single Soul Is More Important Than The Production Or Preservation Of All The Epics And Tragedies In The World.

I Have Discovered That The People Who Believe Most Strongly In The Next Life Do The Most Good In The Present One.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home. (quoting Alexander Maclaren, The Wearied Christ And Other Sermons)

Peter, High King Of Narnia," Said Aslan. "shut The Door.

You Can Put This Another Way By Saying That While In Other Sciences The Instruments You Use Are Things External To Yourself (things Like Microscopes And Telescopes), The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred - Like The Moon Seen Through A Dirty Telescope. That Is Why Horrible Nations Have Horrible Religions: They Have Been Looking At God Through A Dirty Lens.

The Man Who Truly And Disinterestedly Enjoys Any One Thing In The World, For Its Own Sake, And Without Caring Two-pence What Other People Say About It, Is By That Very Fact Forewarmed Against Some Of Our Subtlest Modes Of Attack.

Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.

And Above All, You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Panelling…the Question Should Never Be: ‘do I Like That Kind Of Service?’ But ‘are These Doctrines True: Is Holiness There? Does My Conscience Move Me Towards This? Is My Reluctance To Move To This Door Due To My Pride, Or My Mere Taste, Or My Personal Dislike For This Particular Door-keeper?

In Justifying Cruelty To Animals We Put Ourselves Also On The Animal Level. We Choose The Jungle And Must Abide By Our Choice.

Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery.

The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

It Is The Magician's Bargain: Give Up Our Soul, Get Power In Return. But Once Our Souls, That Is, Ourselves, Have Been Given Up, The Power Thus Conferred Will Not Belong To Us. We Shall In Fact Be The Slaves And Puppets Of That To Which We Have Given Our Souls.

The Great Thing Is To Be Found At One's Post As A Child Of God, Living Each Day As Though It Were Our Last, But Planning As Though The World Might Last A Hundred Years.

It Was Not For Societies Or States, That Christ Died, But For Men.

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, I Can, I Think, Tell Him The First Step. The First Step Is To Realize That One Is Proud. And A Biggish Step, Too. At Least, Nothing Whatever Can Be Done Before It. If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means That You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

I Think Each Village Was Meant To Feel Pity For Its Own Sick And Poor Whom It Can Help And I Doubt If It Is The Duty Of Any Private Person To Fix His Mind On Ills Which He Cannot Help. This May Even Become An Escape From The Works Of Charity We Really Can Do To Those We Know. God May Call Any One Of Us To Respond To Some Far Away Problem Or Support Those Who Have Been So Called. But We Are Finite And He Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.

I Was Not Born To Be Free---i Was Born To Adore And Obey.

Aravis Also Had Many Quarrels (and, I'm Afraid, Even Fights) With Cor, But They Always Made It Up Again: So That Years Later, When They Were Grown Up, They Were So Used To Quarrelling And Making It Up Again That They Got Married So As To Go On Doing It More Conveniently.

You Must Picture Me Alone In That Room In Magdalen, Night After Night, Feeling, Whenever My Mind Lifted Even For A Second From My Work, The Steady, Unrelenting Approach Of Him Whom I So Earnestly Desired Not To Meet. That Which I Greatly Feared Had At Last Come Upon Me. In The Trinity Term Of 1929 I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.

Now Eros Makes A Man Really Want, Not A Woman, But One Particular Woman. In Some Mysterious But Quite Indisputable Fashion The Lover Desires The Beloved Herself, Not The Pleasure She Can Give.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal. Nations, Cultures, Arts, Civilizations--these Are Mortal, And Their Life Is To Ours As The Life Of A Gnat.

We Have Made Men Proud Of Most Vices, But Not Of Cowardice. Whenever We Have Almost Succeeded In Doing So, God Permits A War Or An Earthquake Or Some Other Calamity, And At Once Courage Becomes So Obviously Lovely And Important Even In Human Eyes That All Our Work Is Undone, And There Is Still At Least One Vice Of Which They Feel Genuine Shame. The Danger Of Inducing Cowardice In Our Patients, Therefore, Is Lest We Produce Real Self-knowledge And Self-loathing, With Consequent Repentance And Humility.

As Venus Within Eros Does Not Really Aim At Pleasure, So Eros Does Not Aim At Happiness. We May Think He Does, But When He Is Brought To The Test It Proves Otherwise... For It Is The Very Mark Of Eros That When He Is In Us We Had Rather Share Unhappiness With The Beloved Than Be Happy On Any Other Terms.

Into The Void Of Silence, Into The Empty Space Of Nothing, The Joy Of Life Is Unfurled.

There Have Been Men Before Now Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself.

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