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And He [god] And You Are Two Things Of Such A Kind That If You Really Get Into Any Kind Of Touch With Him You Will, In Fact, Be Humble--delightedly Humble, Feeling The Infinite Relief Of Having For Once Got Rid Of All The Silly Nonsense About Your Own Dignity Which Has Made You Restless And Unhappy All Your Life.

-C. S. Lewis

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And He [god] And

C. S. Lewis

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And He [god] And You Are Two Things Of Such A Kind That If You Really Get Into Any Kind Of Touch With Him You Will, In Fact, Be Humble--delightedly Humble, Feeling The Infinite Relief Of Having For Once Got Rid Of All The Silly Nonsense About Your Own Dignity Which Has Made You Restless And Unhappy All Your Life.

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Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.

The Long, Dull, Monotonous Years Of Middle-aged Prosperity Or Middle-aged Adversity Are Excellent Campaigning Weather For The Devil.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact.

Everything Is As Good Or Bad As Our Opinion Makes It.

Do You Mean To Say," Asked Caspian, "that You Three Come From A Round World (round Like A Ball) And You've Never Told Me! It's Really Too Bad For You. Because We Have Fairy-tales In Which There Are Round Worlds And I Have Always Loved Them … Have You Ever Been To The Parts Where People Walk About Upside-down?" Edmund Shook His Head. "and It Isn't Like That," He Added. "there's Nothing Particularly Exciting About A Round World When You're There.

Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.

Christianity Is Not A Patent Medicine. Christianity Claims To Give An Account Of Facts - To Tell You What The Real Universe Is Like. Its Account Of The Universe May Be True, Or It May Not, And Once The Question Is Really Before You, Then Your Natural Inquisitiveness Must Make You Want To Know The Answer. If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be: If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All.

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe A Price Worth Paying For Free Will...then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

Courtship Is The Time For Sowing Those Seeds Which Will Grow Up Ten Years Into Domestic Hatred.

Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness.

Term, Holidays, Term, Holidays, Till We Leave School, And Then Work, Work, Work Till We Die.

Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses.

A Creature Revolting Against A Creator Is Revolting Against The Source Of His Own Powers-including Even His Power To Revolt...it Is Like The Scent Of A Flower Trying To Destroy The Flower.

Every Uncorrected Error And Unrepented Sin Is, In Its Own Right, A Fountain Of Fresh Error And Fresh Sin Flowing On To The End Of Time.

I Gave Up Christianity At About 14. Came Back To It When Getting On For 30. Not An Emotional Conversion; Almost Purely Philosophical. I Didn't Want To. I'm Not In The Least A Religious Type. I Want To Be Let Alone, To Feel I'm My Own Master; But Since The Facts Seemed To Be Just The Opposite, I Had To Give In.

...here Also Forgiving Does Not Mean Excusing. Many People Seem To Think It Does. They Think That If You Ask Them To Forgive Someone Who Has Cheated Or Bullied Them You Are Trying To Make Out That There Was Really No Cheating Or Bullying. But If That Were So, There Would Be Nothing To Forgive. (this Doesn't Mean That You Must Necessarily Believe His Next Promise. It Does Mean That You Must Make Every Effort To Kill Every Taste Of Resentment In Your Own Heart - Every Wish To Humiliate Or Hurt Him Or To Pay Him Out.)

To Be In Love Involves The Most Irresistible Conviction That One Will Go On Being In Love Until One Dies, And That Possession Of The Beloved Will Confer, Not Merely Frequent Ecstasies, But Settled, Fruitful, Deep-rooted, Lifelong Happiness.

But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.

I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.

It Doesn't Really Matter Whether You Grip The Arms Of The Dentist's Chair Or Let Your Hands Lie In Your Lap. The Drill Drills On.

My Own Eyes Are Not Enough For Me...i Will See Through The Eyes Of Others. Reality, Even Seen Through The Eyes Of Many Is Not Enough...i Will See What Others Have Invented. Even The Eyes Of All Humanity Are Not Enough. I Regret That The Brutes Cannot Write Books. Very Gladly Would I Learn What Face Things Present To A Mouse Or A Bee. More Gladly Still Would I Perceive The Olfactory World Charged With All The Information And Emotion It Carries For A Dog.

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.

The Next Best Thing To Being Wise Oneself Is To Live In A Circle Of Those Who Are.

Tea Should Be Taken In Solitude.

Whatever He Says, Let His Inner Resolution Be Not To Bear Whatever Comes To Him, But To Bear It 'for A Reasonable Period'--and Let The Reasonable Period Be Shorter Than The Trial Is Likely To Last. It Need Not Be Much Shorter; In Attacks On Patience, Chastity, And Fortitude, The Fun Is To Make The Man Yield Just When (had He But Known It) Relief Was Almost In Sight.

After An Error You Need Not Only To Remove The Causes But Also To Correct The Error Itself: After A Sin You Must Not Only, If Possible, Remove The Temptation, You Must Also Go Back And Repent The Sin Itself. In Each Case An 'undoing' Is Required.

Well, You Know How It Feels If You Begin Hoping For Something That You Want Desperately Badly; You Almost Fight Against The Hope Because It Is Too Good To Be True; You've Been Disappointed So Often Before.

Hoping For Something

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

We Regard God As An Airman Regards His Parachute; It's There For Emergencies But He Hopes He'll Never Have To Use It.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. I Have Heard Others, And I Have Heard Myself, Recounting Cruelties And Falsehoods Committed In Boyhood As If They Were No Concern Of The Present Speaker's, And Even With Laughter. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin. The Guilt Is Washed Out Not By Time But By Repentance And The Blood Of Christ: If We Have Repented These Early Sins We Should Remember The Price Of Our Forgiveness And Be Humble.

But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.

But One Of The Worst Results Of Being A Slave And Being Forced To Do Things Is That When There Is No One To Force You Any More You Find You Have Almost Lost The Power Of Forcing Yourself.

Girls Aren't Very Good At Keeping Maps In Their Brains", Said Edmund, "that's Because We've Got Something In Them", Replied Lucy.

You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not While You Are Sleeping. You Can See Mistakes In Arithmetic When Your Mind Is Working Properly; While You Are Making Them You Cannot See Them. Good People Know About Both Bad And Evil; Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

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.

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

Nothing Can Seem Extraordinary Until You Have Discovered What Is Ordinary.

We Might Think That God Wanted Simply Obedience To A Set Of Rules: Whereas He Really Wants People Of A Particular Sort.

As The King Governs By His Executive, So Reason In Man Must Rule The Mere Appetites By Means Of The 'spirited Element.'

Never Forget That When We Are Dealing With Any Pleasure In Its Healthy And Normal And Satisfying Form, We Are, In A Sense, On The Enemy’s (god’s) Ground…he [god] Made The Pleasure: All Our Research So Far Has Not Enabled Us To Produce One. All We Can Do Is To Encourage The Humans To Take The Pleasures Which Our Enemy [god] Has Produced, At At Times, Or In Ways, Or In Degrees, Which He [god] Has Forbidden.

A Man Is Never So Proud As When Striking An Attitude Of Humility.

It Is In Some Ways More Troublesome To Track And Swat An Evasive Wasp Than To Shoot, At Close Range, A Wild Elephant. But The Elephant Is More Troublesome If You Miss.

That Fierce Imprisonment In The Self Is But The Obverse Of The Self-giving Which Is Absolute Reality.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

When We Are Such As He Can Love Without Impediment, We Shall In Fact Be Happy.

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.

To Walk Out Of His Will Is To Walk Into Nowhere.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest.

Nature Never Taught Me That There Exists A God Of Glory And Of Infinite Majesty. I Had To Learn That In Other Ways. But Nature Gave The Word Glory A Meaning For Me. I Still Do Not Know Where Else I Could Have Found One.

If You Think Of This World As A Place Intended Simply For Our Happiness, You Find It Quite Intolerable: Think Of It As A Place Of Training And Correction And It's Not So Bad.

The Christian Life Is Simply A Process Of Having Your Natural Self Changed Into A Christ Self, And That This Process Goes On Very Far Inside. One's Most Private Wishes, One's Point Of View, Are The Things That Have To Be Changed.

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side. You Must Not Do, You Must Not Even Try To Do, The Will Of The Father Unless You Are Prepared To "know Of The Doctrine." All My Acts, Desires, And Thoughts Were To Be Brought Into Harmony With Universal Spirit. For The First Time I Examined Myself With A Seriously Practical Purpose. And There I Found What Appalled Me; A Zoo Of Lusts, A Bedlam Of Ambitions, A Nursery Of Fears, A Harem Of Fondled Hatreds. My Name Was Legion.

Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Even When No One Is Watching.

Love, In The Christian Sense, Does Not Mean An Emotion. It Is A State Not Of The Feelings But Of The Will; That State Of The Will Which We Have Naturally About Ourselves, And Must Learn To Have About Other People.

You Will Not Find The Warrior, The Poet, The Philosopher Or The Christian By Staring Into His Eyes As If He Were Your Mistress: Better Fight Beside Him, Read With Him, Argue With Him, Pray With Him.

It Is A Happy Moment When Our Desire Crosses With The Will Of Heavenly Father.

Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.

The Glory Of God, And, As Our Only Means Of Glorifying Him, The Salvation Of Human Souls, Is The Real Business Of Life.

But Why,... If You Have A Serious Comment To Make On The Real Life Of Men, Must You Do It By Talking About A Phantasmagoric Never-never Land Of Your Own? Because, I Take It, One Of The Main Things The Author Wants To Say Is That The Real Life Of Men Is Of That Mythical And Heroic Quality.

There Is No Use Saying You Chose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.

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.

God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself.

One Of The Dangers Of Having A Lot Of Money Is That You May Be Quite Satisfied With The Kinds Of Happiness Money Can Give And So Fail To Realize Your Need For God. If Everything Seems To Come Simply By Signing Checks, You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

Never Exaggerate. Never Say More Than You Really Mean.

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

As For Wrinkles--pshaw! Why Shouldn't We Have Wrinkles? Honorable Insignia Of Long Service In This Warfare.

And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

I Believe That There Are Too Many Accommodating Preachers... Jesus Christ Did Not Say "go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right." The Gospel Is Something Completely Different. In Fact, It Is Directly Opposed To The World.

A Christian Society Is Not Going To Arrive Until Most Of Us Really Want It: And We Are Not Going To Want It Until We Become Fully Christian. I May Repeat "do As You Would Be Done By" Till I Am Black In The Fact, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbour As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbour As Myself Till I Learn To Love God.

Like A Good Chess Player, Satan Is Always Trying To Maneuver You Into A Position Where You Can Save Your Castle Only By Losing Your Bishop.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.... Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses. If He Is Your Christian Neighbor He Is Holy In Almost The Same Way, For In Him Also Christ Verse Latitat - The Glorifier And The Glorified, Glory Himself, Is Truly Hidden.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed.

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

We Want, In Fact, Not So Much A Father In Heaven As A Grandfather In Heaven: A Senile Benevolence Who, As They Say, "liked To See Young People Enjoying Themselves" And Whose Plan For The Universe Was Simply That It Might Be Truly Said At The End Of Each Day, "a Good Time Was Had By All."

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.

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

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side.

The First Thing To Get Clear About Christian Morality Between Man And Man Is That In This Department Christ Did Not Come To Teach Any Brand New Morality. The Golden Rule Of The New Testament (do As You Would Be Done By) Is A Summing Up Of What Everyone, At Bottom, Had Always Known To Be Right.

Beauty Is Not Democratic; She Reveals Herself More To The Few Than To The Many.

To Admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] Is To Give One's Vote Not Only For A World Of Misery, But Also For A World Of Lies And Propaganda, Of Wishful Thinking, Of Incessant Autobiography.

Be Sure It Is Not For Nothing That The Landlord Has Knit Our Hearts So Closely To Time And Place – To One Friend Rather Than Another And One Shire More That All The Land.

I Became My Own Only When I Gave Myself To Another.

No Emotion Is, In Itself, A Judgement; In That Sense All Emotions And Sentiments Are Alogical. But They Can Be Reasonable Or Unreasonable As They Conform To Reason Or Fail To Conform. The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

When You Have Reached Your Own Room, Be Kind To Those Who Have Chosen Different Doors And To Those Who Are Still In The Hall.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

I See People, As They Approach Me, Trying To Make Up Their Minds Whether They'll 'say Something About It' Or Not. I Hate If They Do, And If They Don't.

Human Beings Judge One Another By Their External Actions. God Judges Them By Their Moral Choices.

Believing Things On Authority Only Means Believing Them Because You Have Been Told Them By Someone You Think Trustworthy. Ninety-nine Per Cent Of The Things You Believe Are Believed On Authority... Every Historical Event In The World Is Believed On Authority. None Of Us Has Seen The Norman Conquest Or The Defeat Of The Armada.

It's All Love Or Sex These Days. Friendship Is Almost As Quaint And Outdated A Notion As Chastity. Soon Friends Will Be Like The Elves And The Pixies - Fabulous Mythical Creatures From A Distant Past.

The Intelligentsia (scientists Apart) Are Losing All Touch With, And All Influence Over, Nearly The Whole Human Race. Our Most Esteemed Poets And Critics Are Read By Our Most Esteemed Critics And Poets (who Don't Usually Like Them Much) And Nobody Else Takes Any Notice. An Increasing Number Of Highly Literate People Simply Ignore What The 'highbrows' Are Doing. It Says Nothing To Them. The Highbrows In Return Ignore And Insult Them.

One Is Sometimes Glad Not To Be A Great Theologian; One Might Easily Mistake It For Being A Good Christian.

The World Was Made Partly That There May Be Prayer; Partly That Our Prayers Might Be Answered.

War Creates No Absolutely New Situation: It Simply Aggravates The Permanent Human Situation So That We Can No Longer Ignore It. Human Life Has Always Been Lived On The Edge Of A Precipice.

..(t)here Are Two Opposite Reasons For Being A Democrat. You May Think All Men So Good That They Deserve A Share In The Government Of The Commonwealth, And So Wise That The Commonwealth Needs Their Advice. That Is, In My Opinion, The False, Romantic Doctrine Of Democracy. On The Other Hand, You May Believe Fallen Men To Be So Wicked That Not One Of Them Can Be Trusted With Any Irresponsible Power Over His Fellows.

The Descent To Hell Is Easy And Those Who Begin By Worshipping Power, Soon Worship Evil.

I Wrote This Story For You, But When I Began It I Had Not Realized That Girls Grow Quicker Than Books. As A Result You Are Already Too Old For Fairy Tales, And By The Time It Is Printed And Bound You Will Be Older Still. But Some Day You Will Be Old Enough To Start Reading Fairy Tales Again. You Can Then Take It Down From Some Upper Shelf, Dust It, And Tell Me What You Think Of It. I Shall Probably Be Too Deaf To Hear, And Too Old To Understand A Word You Say, But I Shall Still Be Your Affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.

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.

If Each Side Had Been Frankly Contending For Its Own Real Wish, They Would All Have Kept Within The Bounds Of Reason And Courtesy; But Just Because The Contention Is Reversed And Each Side Is Fighting The Other Side’s Battle, All The Bitterness Which Really Flows From Thwarted Self-righteousness And Obstinacy And From The Accumulated Grudges Of The Last Ten Years Is Concealed From Them By The Nominal Or Official "unselfishness" Of What They Are Doing Or, At Least, Held To Be Excused By It.

The Real Trouble Is That 'kindness' Is A Quality Fatally Easy To Attribute To Ourselves On Quite Inadequate Grounds. Everyone Feels Benevolent If Nothing Happens To Be Annoying Him At The Moment. Thus A Man Easily Comes To Console Himself For All His Other Vices By A Conviction That 'his Heart's In The Right Place' And 'he Wouldn't Hurt A Fly,' Though In Fact He Has Never Made The Slightest Sacrifice For A Fellow Creature. We Think We Are Kind When We Are Only Happy: It Is Not So Easy, On The Same Grounds, To Imagine Oneself Temperate, Chaste, Or Humble.

Lucy Looked And Saw That Aslan Had Just Breathed On The Feet Of The Stone Giant. It's All Right!" Shouted Aslan Joyously. "once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

A Cold, Self-righteous Prig Who Goes Regularly To Church May Be Far Nearer To Hell Than A Prostitute.

What Began The Change Was The Very Writing Itself. Let No One Lightly Set About Such A Work. Memory, Once Waked, Will Play The Tyrant.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything. But No, That Is Not Quite Accurate. There Is One Place Where Her Absence Comes Locally Home To Me, And It Is A Place I Can't Avoid. I Mean My Own Body. It Had Such A Different Importance While It Was The Body Of H.'s Lover. Now It's Like An Empty House.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact. The Old Myth Of The Dying God, Without Ceasing To Be Myth, Comes Down From The Heaven Of Legend And Imagination To The Earth Of History. It Happens - At A Particular Date, In A Particular Place, Followed By Definable Historical Consequences. We Pass From A Balder Or An Osiris, Dying Nobody Knows When Or Where, To A Historical Person Crucified (it Is All In Order) Under Pontius Pilate. By Becoming Fact It Does Not Cease To Be Myth: That Is The Miracle.

Well, Sir, If Things Are Real, They’re There All The Time." "are They?" Said The Professor; And Peter Did Not Quite Know What To Say.

We Are Forbidden To Neglect The Assembling Of Ourselves Together. Christianity Is Already Institutional In The Earliest Of Its Documents. The Church Is The Bride Of Christ. We Are Members Of One Another.

Will The Others See You Too?" Asked Lucy. "certainly Not At First," Said Aslan. "later On, It Depends." "but They Won’t Believe Me!" Said Lucy. "it Doesn’t Matter.

The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

It Is Only When You Are Asked To Believe In Reason Coming From Non-reason That You Must Cry Halt. Human Minds. They Do Not Come From Nowhere.

God Is Not Merely Good, But Goodness; Goodness Is Not Merely Divine, But God.

Are The Gods Not Just?' 'oh No, Child. What Would Become Us Us If They Were?

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.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It, While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him.

The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts. The Right Defence Against False Sentiments Is To Inculcate Just Sentiments. By Starving The Sensibility Of Our Pupils We Only Make Them Easier Prey To The Propagandist When He Comes. For Famished Nature Will Be Avenged And A Hard Heart Is No Infallible Protection Against A Soft Head.

When An Artist Is In The Strict Sense Working, He Of Course Takes Into Account The Existing Tastes, Interests And Capacity Of His Audience. These No Less Than The Language , The Marble, The Paint, Are Part Of His Aw Material.; To Be Used, Tamed, Sublimated, Not Ignored Or Defied. Haughty Indifference To Them Is Not Genius, It Is Laziness And Incompetence.

In Such A Fearful World, We Need A Fearless Church

The Enemy Wants To Bring The Man To A State Of Mind In Which He Could Design The Best Cathedral In The World, And Know It To Be The Best, And Rejoice In The Fact, Without Being Any More (or Less) Or Otherwise Glad At Having Done It Than He Would Be If It Had Been Done By Another. The Enemy Wants Him, In The End, To Be So Free From Any Bias In His Own Favour That He Can Rejoice In His Own Talents As Frankly And Gratefully As In His Neighbour's Talents--or In A Sunrise, An Elephant, Or A Waterfall.

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You....hand Over The Whole Natural Self, All The Desires Which You Think Innocent As Well As The Ones You Think Wicked- The Whole Outfit. I Will Give You A New Self Instead. In Fact, I Will Give You Myself: My Own Will Shall Become Yours.

She Looked At A Silver Birch: It Would Have A Soft, Showery Voice And Would Look Like A Slender Girl, With Hair Blown All About Her Face And Fond Of Dancing. She Looked At The Oak: He Would Be A Wizened, But Hearty, Old Man With A Frizzled Beard And Warts On His Fact And Hands, With Hair Growing Out Of The Warts. She Looked At The Beech Under Which She Was Standing. Ah! --she Would Be The Best Of All. She Would Be A Gracious Goddess, Smooth And Stately, The Lady Of The Wood.

It Is After You Have Realized That There Is A Real Moral Law, And A Power Behind The Law, And That You Have Broken That Law And Put Yourself Wrong With That Power -- It Is After All This, And Not A Moment Sooner, That Christianity Begins To Talk.

Honest Rejection Of Christ, However Mistaken, Will Be Forgiven And Healed ... But To Evade The Son Of Man, To Look The Other Way, To Pretend You Haven't Noticed, To Become Suddenly Absorbed In Something On The Other Side Of The Street, To Leave The Receiver Off The Telephone Because It Might Be He Who Was Ringing Up, To Leave Unopened Certain Letters In A Strange Handwriting Because They Might Be From Him -- This Is A Different Matter. You May Not Be Certain Yet Whether You Ought To Be A Christian; But You Do Know You Ought To Be A Man, Not An Ostrich, Hiding Its Head In The Sand.

It Is By Human Avarice Or Human Stupidity, Not By The Churlishness Of Nature, That We Have Poverty And Overwork.

Need-love Says Of A Woman "i Cannot Live Without Her"; Gift-love Longs To Give Her Happiness, Comfort, Protection - If Possible, Wealth; Appreciative Love Gazes And Holds Its Breath And Is Silent, Rejoices That Such A Wonder Should Exist Even If Not For Him, Will Not Be Wholly Dejected By Losing Her, Would Rather Have It So Than Never To Have Seen Her At All.

Nothing Is Very Strong: Strong Enough To Steal Away A Man's Best Years Not In Sweet Sins But In A Dreary Flickering Of The Mind Over It Knows Not What And Knows Not Why, In The Gratification Of Curiosities So Feeble That The Man Is Only Half Aware Of Them, In Drumming Of Fingers And Kicking Of Heels, In Whistling Tunes That He Does Not Like, Or In The Long, Dim Labyrinth Of Reveries That Have Not Even Lust Or Ambition To Give Them A Relish, But Which, Once Chance Association Has Started Them, The Creature Is Took Weak And Fuddled To Shake Off.

The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.

If You Make The Same Guess Often Enough It Ceases To Be A Guess And Becomes A Scientific Fact. This Is The Inductive Method.

I Have Been Suspected Of Being What Is Called A Fundamentalist. That Is Because I Never Regard Any Narrative As Unhistorical Simply On The Ground That It Includes The Miraculous.

I'm On Aslan's Side Even If There Isn't Any Aslan To Lead It. I'm Going To Live As Like A Narnian As I Can Even If There Isn't Any Narnia.

The Greatest Evils In The World Will Not Be Carried Out By Men With Guns, But By Men In Suits Sitting Behind Desks

You Had Nothing To Say About It And Yet Made The Nothing Up Into Words.

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons

Men Became Scientific Because They Expected Law In Nature, And They Expected Law In Nature Because They Believed In A Law Giver.

We Shall Draw Nearer To God, Not By Trying To Avoid The Sufferings Inherent In All Loves, But By Accepting Them And Offering Them To Him; Throwing Away All Defensive Armour. If Our Hearts Need To Be Broken, And If He Chooses This As The Way In Which They Should Break, So Be It.

A Moderately Bad Man Knows He Is Not Very Good: A Thoroughly Bad Man Thinks He Is Alright. This Is Common Sense Really. You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not Well You Are Sleeping.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Toward Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again. For However Important Chastity (or Courage, Or Truthfulness, Or Any Other Virtue) May Be, This Process Trains Us In Habits Of The Soul Which Are More Important Still. It Cures Our Illusions About Ourselves And Teaches Us To Depend On God. We Learn, On The One Hand, That We Cannot Trust Ourselves Even In Our Best Moments, And, On The Other, That We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven.

You Cannot Love A Fellow Creature Fully Till You Love God.

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.

Friendship Is The Greatest Of Worldly Goods. Certainly To Me It Is The Chief Happiness Of Life. If I Had To Give A Piece Of Advice To A Young Man About A Place To Live, I Think I Should Say, 'sacrifice Almost Everything To Live Where You Can Be Near Your Friends.'

I Do Not Expect Old Heads On Young Shoulders.

We Have Lost The Invaluable Faculty Of Being Shocked A Faculty Which Has Hitherto Almost Distinguished The Man Or Woman From The Beast Or Child.

If They Are Wrong They Need Your Prayers All The More; And If They Are Your Enemies, Then You Are Under Orders To Pray For Them. That Is One Of The Rules Common To The Whole House.

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

The Only Thing Christianity Can Not Be...is Moderately Important.

And There, Right In The Middle Of It, I Find 'forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive Those That Sin Against Us.' There Is No Slightest Suggestion That We Are Offered Forgiveness On Any Other Terms. It Is Made Perfectly Clear That If We Do Not Forgive We Shall Not Be Forgiven.

The Fact That You Are Giving Money To Charity Does Not Mean That You Need Not Try To Find Out Whether That Charity Is A Fraud Or Not.

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.

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

We Don't Have A Soul. We Are A Soul. We Happen To Have A Body.

If Things Are Real, They're There All The Time.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

The Hard Sayings Of Our Lord Are Wholesome To Those Only Who Find Them Hard.

A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.

God Is, If I May Say It, Very Unscrupulous

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

Not That I Am (i Think) In Much Danger Of Ceasing To Believe In God. The Real Danger Is Of Coming To Believe Such Dreadful Things About Him. The Conclusion I Dread Is Not 'so There's No God After All,' But 'so This Is What God's Really Like. Deceive Yourself No Longer.

[milton's] Argument Is (a) St. Augustine Was Wrong In Thinking God's Only Purpose In Giving Adam A Female, Instead Of A Male, Companion, Was Copulation. For (b) There Is A "peculiar Comfort" In The Society Of Man And Woman "beside, (i.e. In Addition To, Apart From) The Genial Bed"; And (c) We Know From Scripture That Something Analogous To "play" Or "slackening The Cords" Occurs Even In God. That Is Why The Song Of Songs Describes A Thousand Raptures...far On The Hither Side Of Carnal Enjoyment.

Don't Shine So That Others Can See You. Shine So That Through You, Others Can See Him.

There Is A Story About A Schoolboy Who Was Asked What He Thought God Was Like. He Replied That, As Far As He Could Make Out, God Was 'the Sort Of Person Who Is Always Snooping Around To See If Anyone Is Enjoying Himself And Then Trying To Stop It.'

Sainthood Lies In The Habit Of Referring The Smallest Actions To God.

An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.

Never, In Peace Or War, Commit Your Virtue Or Your Happiness To The Future. Happy Work Is Best Done By The Man Who Takes His Long-term Plans Somewhat Lightly And Works From Moment To Moment 'as To The Lord.' It Is Only Our Daily Bread That We Are Encouraged To Ask For. The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty Can Be Done Or Any Grace Received.

You Can't Really Study People; You Can Only Get To Know Them.

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

For In Calormen, Story-telling (whether The Stories Are True Or Made Up) Is A Thing You're Taught, Just As English Boys And Girls Are Taught Essay-writing. The Difference Is That People Want To Hear The Stories, Whereas I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Wanted To Read The Essays.

He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.

The Value Given To The Testimony Of Any Feeling Must Depend On Our Whole Philosophy, Not Our Whole Philosophy On A Feeling.

And As Jill Gazed At Its Motionless Bulk, She Realized That She Might As Well Have Asked The Whole Mountain To Move Aside For Her Convenience.

A Society Where The Simple Many Obey The Few Seers Can Live; A Society Where All Were Seers Could Live Even More Fully. But A Society Where The Mass Is Still Simple And The Seers Are No Longer Attended To Can Achieve Only Superficiality, Baseness, Ugliness, And In The End Extinction. On Or Back We Must Go: To Stay Here Is Death.

I Haven't Any Language Weak Enough To Depict The Weakness Of My Spiritual Life. If I Weakened It Enough It Would Cease To Be Language At All. As When You Try To Turn The Gas-ring A Little Lower Still, And It Merely Goes Out.

In The Name Of The Fathers, And Of The Son And Of The Holy Ghost, Here Goes-i Mean Amen.

I Wonder Do The Gods Know What It Feels Like To Be A Man.

Remember That All Worlds Draw To An End And That Noble Death Is A Treasure Which No One Is Too Poor To Buy.

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

Even In This World Of Course It Is The Stupidest Children Who Are Most Childish And The Stupidest Grown-ups Who Are Most Grown-up.

They Tell Me, Lord, That When I Seem To Be In Speech With You. Since But One Voice Is Heard, It

You Ask ‘for What’ God Wants You. Isn’t The Primary Answer That He Wants You. We’re Not Told That The Lost Sheep Was Sought Out For Anything Except Itself [matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7]. Of Course, He May Have A Special Job For You: And The Certain Job Is That Of Becoming More And More His.

If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Be Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

Telling The Truth

I'm Hunger. I'm Thirst. Where I Bite, I Hold Till I Die, And Even After Death They Must Cut Out My Mouthful From My Enemy's Body And Bury It With Me. I Can Fast A Hundred Years And Not Die. I Can Lie A Hundred Nights On The Ice And Not Freeze. I Can Drink A River Of Blood And Not Burst. Show Me Your Enemies.

Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Believe In A Certain Way, And Can't Really Get Rid Of It.

In Any Fairly Large And Talkative Community Such As A University There Is Always The Danger That Those Who Think Alike Should Gravitate Together Where They Will Henceforth Encounter Opposition Only In The Emasculated Form Of Rumour That The Outsiders Say Thus And Thus. The Absent Are Easily Refuted, Complacent Dogmatism Thrives, And Differences Of Opinion Are Embittered By The Group Hostility. Each Group Hears Not The Best, But The Worst, That The Other Group Can Say.

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

Only The Skilled Can Judge The Skillfulness, But That Is Not The Same As Judging The Value Of The Result.

Pure, Spiritual, Intellectual Love Shot Form Their Faces Like Barbedlightning. It Was So Unlike The Love We Experience That Its Expressioncould Easily Be Mistaken For Ferocity.

When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The Religion Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft: Protestantism, In Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes

Every Disability Conceals A Vocation, If Only We Can Find It, Which Will 'turn The Necessity To Glorious Gain.

The Standard That Measures Two Things Is Something Different From Either. You Are, In Fact, Comparing Them Both With Some Real Morality, Admitting That There Is Such A Thing As A Real Right, Independent Of What People Think, And That Some People's Ideas Get Nearer To That Real Right Than Others.

Aslan" Said Lucy "you're Bigger". "that Is Because You Are Older, Little One" Answered He. "not Because You Are?" "i Am Not. But Every Year You Grow, You Will Find Me Bigger".

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

We Must Sometimes Get Away From The Authorized Version, If For No Other Reason, Simply Because It Is So Beautiful And So Solemn. Beauty Exalts, But Beauty Also Lulls. Early Associations Endear, But They Also Confuse. Through That Beautiful Solemnity, The Transporting Or Horrifying Realities Of Which The Book Tells May Come To Us Blunted And Disarmed, And We May Only Sigh With Tranquil Veneration When We Ought To Be Burning With Shame, Or Struck Dumb With Terror, Or Carried Out Of Ourselves By Ravishing Hopes And Adorations.

I Care Far More How Humanity Lives Than How Long. Progress, For Me, Means Increasing Goodness And Happiness Of Individual Lives. For The Species, As For Each Man, Mere Longevity Seems To Me A Contemptible Ideal.

I Know All About The Despair Of Overcoming Chronic Temptation. It Is Not Serious, Provided Self-offended Petulance, Annoyance At Breaking Records, Impatience, Etc., Don't Get The Upper Hand. No Amount Of Falls Will Really Undo Us If We Keep Picking Ourselves Up Each Time...the Only Fatal Thing Is To Lose One's Temper And Give Up.

This Is My Endlessly Recurrent Temptation: To Go Down To That Sea, And There Neither Dive Nor Swim Nor Float, But Only Dabble And Splash, Careful Not To Get Out Of My Depth And Holding On To The Lifeline Which Connects Me With My Things Temporal.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung.

The People With Very Hard Problems Are Understood By God. He Knows What Wretched Machines They Are Trying To Drive. Some Day He Will Fling Them Away And Give Those People New Ones; Then They May Astonish Everyone, For They Learned Their Driving In A Hard School. Some Of The Last Will Be First And Some Of The First Will Be Last.

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

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

In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.

She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.

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