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And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

-C. S. Lewis

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And Now, What Does

C. S. Lewis

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And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

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No Philosophical Theory Which I Have Yet Come Across Is A Radical Improvement On The Words Of Genesis, That 'in The Beginning God Made Heaven And Earth'.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

It Certainly Is My Opinion That A Book Worth Reading Only In Childhood Is Not Worth Reading Even Then.

Some Day You Will Be Old Enough To Start Reading Fairy Tales Again.

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death.

Some People Probably Think Of The Resurrection As A Desperate Last Moment Expedient To Save The Hero From A Situation Which Had Got Out Of The Author's Control.

Most People Spend Most Of Their Lives Doing Neither What They Want To Be Doing Nor What They Ought To Be Doing.

The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.

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.

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing--rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

I Have Seen Something Like It Happen In Battle. A Man Was Coming At Me, I At Him, To Kill. Then Came A Sudden Great Gust Of Wind That Wrapped Out Cloaks Over Our Swords And Almost Over Our Eyes, So That We Could Do Nothing To One Another But Must Fight The Wind Itself. And That Ridiculous Contention, So Foreign To The Business We Were On, Set Us Both Laughing, Face To Face - Friends For A Moment - And Then At Once Enemies Again And Forever.

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.

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

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.

If You Ask Why We Should Obey God, In The Last Resort The Answer Is, 'i Am.' To Know God Is To Know That Our Obedience Is Due To Him.

They Say, 'the Coward Dies Many Times'; So Does The Beloved. Didn't The Eagle Find A Fresh Liver To Tear In Prometheus Every Time It Dined?

The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start.

The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.

You Must See That If Two Things Are Alike, Then It Is A Further Question Whether The First Is Copied From The Second, Or The Second From The First, Or Both From A Third.

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.

Prayer In The Sense Of Petition, Asking For Things, Is A Small Part Of It; Confession And Penitence Are Its Threshold, Adoration Its Sanctuary, The Presence And Vision And Enjoyment Of God Its Bread And Wine.

Even If There Were Pains In Heaven, All Who Understand Would Desire Them.

And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?

Have You Not Seen That In Our Days Of Any Whose Story, Song Or Art Delights Us, Our Sincerest Praise Means, When All's Said, 'you Break My Heart?

Though Under Earth, And Throneless Now I Be Yet While I Lived All Earth Was Under Me.

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

In God You Come Up Against Something Which Is In Every Respect Immeasurably Superior To Yourself. Unless You Know God As That-and, Therefore, Know Yourself As Nothing In Comparison-you Do Not Know God At All.

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

We Hear A Great Deal About The Rudeness Of The Rising Generation. I Am An Oldster Myself And Might Be Expected To Take The Oldsters' Side, But In Fact I Have Been Far More Impressed By The Bad Manners Of Parents To Children Than By Those Of Children To Parents.

If A Thing Is Free To Be Good It Is Also Free To Be Bad. And Free Will Is What Has Made Evil Possible. Why, Then, Did God Give Them Free Will? Because Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Is Also The Only Thing That Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

This Wasn't A Garden,' Said Susan Presently. 'it Was A Castle.

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.

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.

... Believing In A God Whom We Cannot But Regard As Evil, And Then, In Mere Terrified Flattery Calling Him 'good' And Worshipping Him Is A Still Greater Danger... The Ultimate Question Is Whether The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Or That Of The Inerrancy Of Scripture Is To Prevail When They Conflict. I Think The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Is The More Certain Of The Two. Indeed, Only That Doctrine Renders This Worship Of Him Obligatory Or Even Permissable.

Puddleglum,' They've Said, 'you're Altogether Too Full Of Bobance And Bounce And High Spirits. You've Got To Learn That Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Ell Pie. You Want Something To Sober You Down A Bit. We're Only Saying It For Your Own Good, Puddleglum.' That's What They Say. Now A Job Like This --a Journey Up North Just As Winter's Beginning Looking For A Prince That Probably Isn't There, By Way Of Ruined City Nobody's Ever Seen-- Will Be Just The Thing. If That Doesn't Steady A Chap, I Don't Know What Will.

What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

He Didn't Call His Father And Mother 'father' And 'mother' But Harold And Alberta. They Were Very Up To Date And Advanced People. They Were Vegetarians, Non-smokers And Teetotalers, And Wore A Special Kind Of Underclothes. In Their House There Was Very Little Furniture And Very Few Clothes On The Beds And The Windows Were Always Open.

A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.

Whenever All Men Are...hastening To Be Slaves Or Tyrants We Make Liberalism The Prime Bogey.

Screwtape Letters

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

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

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons

The Christian Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us.

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

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?

For Jokes As Well As Justice Come In With Speech.

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death; I Must Never Let It Get Snowed Under Or Turned Aside; I Must Make It The Main Object Of Life To Press On To That Other Country And To Help Others To Do The Same.

It Is Easy To Acknowledge, But Almost Impossible To Realize For Long, That We Are Mirrors Whose Brightness, If We Are Bright, Is Wholly Derived From The Sun That Shines Upon Us.

What You See And What You Hear Depends A Great Deal On Where You Are Standing. It Also Depends On What Sort Of Person You Are.

It Is A Good Rule After Reading A New Book, Never To Allow Yourself Another New One Till You Have Read An Old One In Between.

Miracles Do Not, In Fact, Break The Laws Of Nature.

If You Haven't Met Satan Recently, You Are Probably Going His Way!

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Or Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You.

Notice How We Are Perpetually Surprised At Time. ('how Time Flies! Fancy John Being Grown-up And Married! I Can Hardly Believe It!') In Heavens Name, Why? Unless, Indeed, There Is Something In Us Which Is Not Temporal.

Art Can Teach Without At All Ceasing To Be Art.

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man.

If We Discover A Desire Within Us That Nothing In This World Can Satisfy, Also We Should Begin To Wonder If Perhaps We Were Created For Another World.

At Present We Are On The Outside Of The World, The Wrong Side Of The Door. We Discern The Freshness And Purity Of Morning, But They Do Not Make Us Fresh And Pure. We Cannot Mingle With The Splendours We See. But All The Leaves Of The New Testament Are Rustling With The Rumour That It Will Not Always Be So. Some Day, God Willing, We Shall Get In.

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

Every Sin Is The Distortion Of An Energy Breathed Into Us.

Long Before History Began We Men Have Got Together Apart From The Women And Done Things. We Had Time.

What Does Seem To Me Poisonous, What Breeds A Type Of Patriotism That Is Pernicious If It Lasts But Not Likely To Last Long In An Educated Adult, Is The Perfectly Serious Indoctrination Of The Young In Knowably False Or Biased History - The Heroic Legend Drably Disguised As Text-book Fact. With This Creeps In The Tacit Assumption That Other Nations Have Not Equally Their Heroes; Perhaps Even The Belief - Surely It Is Very Bad Biology - That We Can Literally 'inherit' Tradition.

A Promise Must Be About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling A Certain Way.

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

Only A Bad Person Needs To Repent: Only A Good Person Can Repent Perfectly.

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.

And He Writhed Inside At What Seemed The Cruelty And Unfairness Of The Demand. He Had Not Yet Learned That If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

Reason Is The Natural Order Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning.

There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditures Excludes Them.

But The Most Obvious Fact About Praise — Whether Of God Or Anything — Strangely Escaped Me. I Thought Of It In Terms Of Compliment, Approval, Or The Giving Of Honor. I Had Never Noticed That All Enjoyment Spontaneously Overflows Into Praise Unless (sometimes Even If) Shyness Or The Fear Of Boring Others Is Deliberately Brought In To Check It.

All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out Of Date.

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.

A World Of Automata – Of Creatures That Worked Like Machines – Would Hardly Be Worth Creating.

The Real Trouble About The Duty Of Forgiveness Is That You Do It With All Your Might On Monday And Then Find On Wednesday That It Hasn't Stayed Put And All Has To Be Done Over Again.

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are Only The Picture. You Can't See It. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted---i.e., Keep Fulfilling All The Obvious Duties Of Your Station (you Really Know Quite Well Enough What They Are!), Asking Forgiveness For Each Failure And Then Leaving It Alone.you Are In The Right Way. Walk---don't Keep On Looking At It.

The Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).

Language Exists To Communicate Whatever It Can Communicate. Some Things It Communicates So Badly That We Never Attempt To Communicate Them By Words If Any Other Medium Is Available.

The Proper Good Of A Creature Is To Surrender Itself To Its Creator—to Enact Intellectually, Volitionally, And Emotionally, That Relationship Which Is Given In The Mere Fact Of Its Being A Creature. When It Does So, It Is Good And Happy.

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.

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

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.

Aristotle Said That Some People Were Only Fit To Be Slaves. I Do Not Contradict Him. But I Reject Slavery Because I See No Men Fit To Be Masters.

Every Sin Is The Distortion Of An Energy Breathed Into Us - An Energy Which, If Not Thus Distorted, Would Have Blossomed Into One Of Those Holy Acts Whereof 'god Did It' And 'i Did It' Are Both True Descriptions.

It's Not A Question Of God 'sending' Us To Hell. In Each Of Us There Is Something Growing Up Which Will Of Itself Be Hell Unless It Is Nipped In The Bud.

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.

Progress Means Movement In A Desired Direction, And We Do Not All Desire The Same Things For Our Species.

The First Action To Be Taken Is To Pull Ourselves Together. If We Are Going To Be Destroyed By An Atomic Bomb, Let That Bomb, When It Comes, Find Us Doing Sensible And Human Things -- Praying, Working, Teaching, Reading, Listening To Music, Bathing The Children, Playing Tennis, Chatting To Our Friends Over A Pint And A Game Of Darts -- Not Huddled Together Like Frightened Sheep And Thinking About Bombs.

God Loves Us Not Because We're Lovable, Because He Is Love. Not Because He Needs To Receive, Because He Delights To Give.

The More Imagination The Reader Has ... The More He Will Do For Himself. He Will, At A Mere Hint From The Author, Flood Wretched Material With Suggestion And Never Guess That He Is Himself Chiefly Making What He Enjoys.

Gratitude Exclaims, Very Properly, 'how Good Of God To Give Me This.'

We May Not Be Able To Get Certainty, But We Can Get Probability, And Half A Loaf Is Better Than No Bread.

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven. Our Merriment Must Be Between People Who Take Each Other Seriously.

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.

That Raises A Terrible Question. How Is It That People Who Are Quite Obviously Eaten Up With Pride Can Say They Believe In God And Appear To Themselves Very Religious? I Am Afraid It Means They Are Worshiping An Imaginary God.

Don't Say It Was "delightful"; Make Us Say "delightful" When We've Read The Description.

I Have Discovered, Passionate Grief Does Not Link Us With The Dead But Cuts Us Off From Them. This Becomes Clearer And Clearer. It Is Just At Those Moments When I Feel Least Sorrow - Getting Into My Morning Bath Is Usually One Of Them - That H. Rushes Upon My Mind In Her Full Reality, Her Otherness. Not, As In My Worst Moments, All Foreshortened And Patheticized And Solemnized By My Miseries, But As She Is In Her Own Right. This Is Good And Tonic.

A Tyrannous And Gluttonous Demand For Affection Can Be A Horrible Thing. But In Ordinary Life No One Calls A Child Selfish Because It Turns For Comfort To Its Mother; Nor An Adult Who Turns To His Fellow "for Company." Those, Whether Children Or Adults, Who Do So Least Are Not Usually The Most Selfless.

As St. Paul Points Out, Christ Never Meant That We Were To Remain Children In Intelligence: On The Contrary, He Told Us To Be Not Only "as Harmless As Doves," But Also "as Wise As Serpents." He Wants A Child's Heart, But A Grown-up's Head.

The Whole Journey Was Odd And Dream-like -- The Roaring Stream, The Wet Grey Grass, The Glimmering Cliffs Which They Were Approaching, And Always The Glorious, Silently Pacing Beast Ahead.

For They (art And Music) Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

The Son Of God Became A Man To Enable Men To Become Sons Of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis

God Is Not An Optional Extra, He's An Absolute Must!

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

I Would Prefer To Battle The 'i'm Special' Feeling Not By The Thought, 'i'm No More Special Than Anyone Else,' By By The Feeling, 'everyone Is As Special As Me.'

You Can't See Anything Properly While Your Eyes Are Blurred With Tears.

We Must Perpetually Try To Distinguish, However Closely They Get Entwined By The Subtle Nature Of The Facts And By The Secret Importunity Of Our Passions, Those Attitudes In A Writer Which We Can Honestly And Confidently Condemn As Real Evils, And Those Qualities In His Writing Which Simply Annoy And Offend Us As Men Of Taste.

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

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.

It Will Not Bother Me In The Hour Of Death To Reflect That I Have Been "had For A Sucker" By Any Number Of Imposters But It Would Be A Torment To Know That One Had Refused Even One Person In Need.

An Ulster Scot May Come To Disbelieve In God, But Not To Wear His Weekday Clothes On The Sabbath.

[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.

It Is Safe To Tell The Pure In Heart That They Shall See God, For Only The Pure In Heart Want To.

Our Heavenly Father Has Provided Many Delightful Inns For Us Along Our Journey, But He Takes Great Care To See That We Do Not Mistake Any Of Them For Home.

I Believe, To Be Sure, That Any Man Who Reaches Heaven Will Find That What He Abandoned (even In Plucking Out His Right Eye) Has Not Been Lost: That The Kernel Of What He Was Really Seeking Even In His Most Depraved Wishes Will Be There, Beyond Expectation, Waiting For Him In 'the High Countries'.

To Get Even Near Humility, Even For A Moment, Is Like A Drink Of Cold Water To A Man In A Desert.

Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.

Every Story Of Conversion Is The Story Of A Blessed Defeat.

If One Could Run Without Getting Tired I Don't Think One Would Often Want To Do Anything Else.

I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)

For Every One Pupil Who Needs To Be Guarded Against A Weak Excess Of Sensibility There Are Three Who Need To Be Awakened From The Slumber Of Cold Vulgarity. The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts.

Watchin' And Listenin' Is The Thing At Present; Not Talking.

What Can Be Better Than To Get Out A Book On Saturday Afternoon And Thrust All Mundane Considerations Away Till Next Week.

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

The True Reader Reads Every Work Seriously In The Sense That He Reads It Whole-heartedly, Makes Himself As Receptive As He Can. But For That Very Reason He Cannot Possibly Read Every Work Solemly Or Gravely. For He Will Read 'in The Same Spirit That The Author Writ.'... He Will Never Commit The Error Of Trying To Munch Whipped Cream As If It Were Venison.

It Is Important Early In Life To Acquire The Power Of Reading Sense Wherever You Happen To Be.

If You Do Not Take The Distinction Between Good And Bad Very Seriously, Then It Is Easy To Say That Anything You Find In This World Is A Part Of God. But, Of Course, If You Think Some Things Really Bad, And God Really Good, Then You Cannot Talk Like That. You Must Believe That God Is Separate From The World And That Some Of The Things We See In It Are Contrary To His Will.

The Most Precious Gift That Marriage Gave Me Was The Constant Impact Of Something Very Close And Intimate, Yet All The Time Unmistakably Other, Resistant - In A Word, Real.

If We Ignore It The Truth That God Is Love May Slyly Come To Mean For Us The Converse, That Love Is God.

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

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

What We Learn From Experience Depends On The Kind Of Philosophy We Bring To Experience.

Learning Experience

Those Who Torment Us For Our Own Good Will Torment Us Without End, For They Do So With The Approval Of Their Own Conscience.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

Feeling Like The Voice She Liked Best In All The World Was Calling Her Name.

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.

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

My Own Eyes Are Not Enough For Me; I Will See Through Those Of Others.

Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said.

Remember, We Christians Think Man Lives For Ever. Therefore, What Really Matters Is Those Little Marks Or Twists On The Central, Inside Part Of The Soul Which Are Going To Turn It, In The Long Run, Into A Heavenly Or A Hellish Creature.

Once In Those Very Early Days My Brother Brought Into The Nursery The Lid Of A Biscuit Tin Which He Had Covered With Moss And Garnished With Twigs And Flowers So As To Make It A Toy Garden Or A Toy Forest. That Was The First Beauty I Ever Knew. What The Real Garden Had Failed To Do, The Toy Garden Did. It Made Me Aware Of Nature-not, Indeed, As A Storehouse Of Forms And Colors But As Something Cool, Dewy, Fresh, Exuberant....as Long As I Live My Imagination Of Paradise Will Retain Something Of My Brother's Toy Garden.

Stop It," Spluttered Eustace, "go Away. Put That Thing Away. It's Not Safe. Stop It, I Say. I'll Tell Caspian. I'll Have You Muzzled And Tied Up." "why Do You Not Draw Your Own Sword, Poltroon!" Cheeped The Mouse. "draw And Fight Or I'll Beat You Black And Blue With The Flat." "i Haven't Got One," Said Eustace. "i'm A Pacifist. I Don't Believe In Fighting." "do I Understand," Said Reepicheep, Withdrawing His Sword For A Moment And Speaking Very Sternly, "that You Do Not Intend To Give Me Satisfaction?

Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

The Modern State Exists Not To Protect Our Rights But To Do Us Good Or Make Us Good - Anyway, To Do Something To Us Or To Make Us Something. Hence The New Name 'leaders' For Those Who Were Once 'rulers'. We Are Less Their Subjects Than Their Wards, Pupils, Or Domestic Animals. There Is Nothing Left Of Which We Can Say To Them, 'mind Your Own Business.' Our Whole Lives Are Their Business.

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

Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.

Humility Is Not Thinking Less Of Yourself, It's Thinking Of Yourself Less.

The 'frankness' Of People Sunk Below Shame Is A Very Cheap Frankness.

The Homemaker Has The Ultimate Career. All Other Careers Exist For One Purpose Only - And That Is To Support The Ultimate Career.

If These Holy Places, Things, And Days Cease To Remind Us, If They Obliterate Our Awareness That All Ground Is Holy And Every Bush (could We But Perceive It) A Burning Bush, Then The Hallows Begin To Do Harm. Hence Both The Necessity, And The Perennial Danger, Of 'religion.'

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.

Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, 'no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It,' Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.

Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

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

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.

There Have Been Men Before Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself, As If The Good Lord Had Nothing To Do But To Exist. There Have Been Some Who Were So Preoccupied With Spreading Christianity That They Never Gave A Thought To Christ.

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

And There’s Also ‘to Him That Hath Shall Be Given.’ After All, You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can’t Give. Perhaps Your Own Passion Temporarily Destroys The Capacity.

You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can't Give.

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did, He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is)... Continue Seeking Him With Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

The Mark Of Friendship Is Not That Help Will Be Given When The Pinch Comes (of Course It Will) But That, Having Been Given, It Makes No Difference At All.

Prayer Is Either A Sheer Illusion Or A Personal Contact Between Embryonic, Incomplete Persons (ourselves) And The Utterly Concrete Person.

A Man Who First Tried To Guess 'what The Public Wants,' And Then Preached That As Christianity Because The Public Wants It, Would Be A Pretty Mixture Of Fool And Knave

The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One - The Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts.

Thought Provoking

The Desire For Bad Art Is The Desire Bred Of Habit: Like The Smoker's Desire For Tobacco, More Marked By The Extreme Malaise Of Denial Than By Any Very Strong Delight In Fruition.

When You Argue Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

A Man's Physical Hunger Does Not Prove That Man Will Get Any Bread; He May Die Of Starvation On A Raft In The Atlantic. But Surely A Man's Hunger Does Prove That He Comes Of A Race Which Repairs Its Body By Eating And Inhabits A World Where Eatable Substances Exist. In The Same Way, Though I Do Not Believe (i Wish I Did) That My Desire For Paradise Proves That I Shall Enjoy It, I Think It A Pretty Good Indication That Such A Thing Exists And That Some Men Will.

The More We Get What We Now Call 'ourselves' Out Of The Way And Let Him Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become.

If There Is Equality It Is In His Love, Not In Us.

When You Go To Church You Are Really Listening In To The Secret Wireless From Our Friends.

I Think That If God Forgives Us We Must Forgive Ourselves. Otherwise, It Is Almost Like Setting Up Ourselves As A Higher Tribunal Than Him.

Isn't It Funny The Way Some Combinations Of Words Can Give You--almost Apart From Their Meaning--a Thrill Like Music?

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

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.

Grief. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

Losing Everything

I Do Not Doubt That If The Paradisal Man Could Now Appear Among Us, We Should Regard Him As An Utter Savage, A Creature To Be Exploited Or, At Best, Patronised. Only One Or Two, And Those The Holiest Among Us, Would Glance A Second Time At The Naked, Shaggy-bearded, Slow Spoken Creature: But They, After A Few Minutes, Would Fall At His Feet.

But Now I Discovered The Wonderful Power Of Wine. I Understood Why Men Become Drunkards. For The Way It Worked On Me Was Not At All That It Blotted Out These Sorrows, But That It Made Them Seem Glorious And Noble, Like Sad Music, And I Somehow Great And Revered For Feeling Them.

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

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.

The Right Direction Leads Not Only To Peace But To Knowledge.

Right Direction

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

Writing Is Like A 'lust,' Or Like 'scratching When You Itch.' Writing Comes As A Result Of A Very Strong Impulse, And When It Does Come, I For One Must Get It Out.

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 Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs. There Is Not One Of Them Which Will Not Make Us Into Devils If We Set It Up As An Absolute Guide. You Might Think Love Of Humanity In General Was Safe, But It Is Not. If You Leave Out Justice You Will Find Yourself Breaking Agreements And Faking Evidence In Trials "for The Sake Of Humanity", And Become In The End A Cruel And Treacherous Man.

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.

The Very First Tear He Made Was So Deep That I Thought It Had Gone Right Into My Heart.

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

Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.

God Gives His Gifts Where He Finds The Vessel Empty Enough To Receive Them.

We Come To Scripture Not To Learn A Subject But To Steep Ourselves In A Person.

Education Is Only The Most Fully Conscious Of The Channels Whereby Each Generation Influences The Next.

We Delight To Praise What We Enjoy Because The Praise Not Merely Expresses But Completes The Enjoyment; It Is Its Appointed Consummation. It Is Not Out Of Compliment That Lovers Keep On Telling One Another How Beautiful They Are; The Delight Is Incomplete Till It Is Expressed.

She Did Not Shut It Properly Because She Knew That It Is Very Silly To Shut Oneself Into A Wardrobe, Even If It Is Not A Magic One.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Something Of God... Flows Into Us From The Blue Of The Sky, The Taste Of Honey, The Delicious Embrace Of Water Whether Cold Or Hot, And Even From Sleep Itself.

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.

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.

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.

"i Wish I Had Never Been Born," She Said. "what Are We Born For?" "for Infinite Happiness," Said The Spirit. "you Can Step Out Into It At Any Moment..."

The Guide Sang: The New Age, The New Art, The New Ethic And Thought, And Fools Crying, Because It Has Begun It Will Continue As It Has Begun! The Wheel Runs Fast, Therefore The Wheel Will Run Faster For Ever, The Old Age Is Done, We Have New Lights And See Without The Sun. (though They Lay Flat The Mountains And Dry Up The Sea, Wilt Thou Yet Change, As Though God Were A God?)

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe The Sun Has Risen, Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

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