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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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As St. Paul Points

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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I Think He Made One Law Of That Kind In Order That There Might Be Obedience. In All These Other Matters What You Call Obeying Him Is But Doing What Seems Good In Your Own Eyes Also. Is Love Content With That?

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.

And Out Of That Hopeless Attempt Has Come Nearly All That We Call Human History—money, Poverty, Ambition, War, Prostitution, Classes, Empires, Slavery—the Long Terrible Story Of Man Trying To Find Something Other Than God Which Will Make Him Happy.

Love Is Never Wasted, For Its Value Does Not Rest Upon Reciprocity.

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

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

He Liked Books If They Were Books Of Information And Had Pictures Of Grain Elevators Or Of Fat Foreign Children Doing Exercises In Model Schools.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin.

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.'

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.

I Didn’t Go To Religion To Make Me Happy. I Always Knew A Bottle Of Port Would Do That. If You Want A Religion To Make You Feel Really Comfortable, I Certainly Don’t Recommend Christianity.

Christian Inspirational

The Human Mind Is Generally Far More Eager To Praise Or Dispraise Than It Is To Describe And Define.

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.

No Mind Is So Good That It Does Not Need Another Mind To Counter And Equal It, And To Save It From Conceit And Bigotry And Folly

One Of The Reasons Why It Needs No Special Education To Be A Christian Is That Christianity Is An Education Itself.

All Hell Is Smaller Than One Pebble Of Your Earthly World; But It Is Smaller Than One Atom Of This World, The Real World.

A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Till You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On.

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.

Hell Is A State Of Mind -- Ye Never Said A Truer Word. And Every State Of Mind, Left To Itself, Every Shutting Up Of The Creature Within The Dungeon Of Its Own Mind -- Is, In The End, Hell. But Heaven Is Not A State Of Mind. Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly.

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.

Gratitude Looks To The Past And Love To The Present; Fear, Avarice, Lust, And Ambition Look Ahead.

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.

You And I Have Need Of The Strongest Spell That Can Be Found To Wake Us From The Evil Enchantment Of Worldliness.

Unless Thought Is Valid We Have No Reason To Believe In The Real Universe.

I Am Struck Here By The Curious Mixture Of Justice And Injustice In Our Lives. We Are Blamed For Our Real Faults But Usually Not On The Right Occasions.

If God Were A Kantian, Who Would Not Have Us Till We Came To Him From The Purest And Best Motives, Who Could Be Saved?

Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.

All Day I Have Been Tossed And Whirled In A Preposterous Happiness; Was It An Elf In The Blood? Or A Bird In The Brain? Or Even Part Of The Cloudily Crested, Fifty-league-long, Loud, Uplifted Wave Of A Journeying Angels Transit Over And Through My Heart?

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

The Poison Was Brewed In These West Lands But It Has Spat Itself Everywhere By Now. However Far You Went You Would Find The Machines, The Crowded Cities, The Empty Thrones, The False Writings, The Barren Beds: Men Maddened With False Promises And Soured With True Miseries, Worshipping The Iron Works Of Their Own Hands, Cut Off From Earth Their Mother And From The Father In Heaven. You Might Go East So Far The East Became West And You Returned To Britain Across The Great Ocean, But Even So You Would Not Have Come Out Anywhere Into The Light. The Shadow Of One Dark Wing Is Over All Tellus.

Many People Think Their Prayers Are Never Answered Because It Is The Answered Ones They Forget.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable.

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

In Order That We Finite Beings May Apprehend The Emporer He Translates His Glory Into Multiple Forms - Into Stars, Woods, Waters, Beasts, And The Bodies Of Men.

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Christianity Asserts That Every Individual Human Being Is Going To Live For Ever, And This Must Be Either True Or False. Now There Are A Good Many Things Which Would Not Be Worth Bothering About If I Were Going To Live Only Seventy Years, But Which I Had Better Bother About Very Seriously If I Am Going To Live For Ever.

Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

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.

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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.

Now Sir, Said The Bulldog In His Business-like Way. 'are You A Animal, Vegetable, Or Mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew

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Prosperity Knits A Man To The World.

Screwtape Letters

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If Education Is Beaten By Training, Civilization Dies.

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Train Of Thought

Don't Use Words Too Big For The Subject. Don't Say 'infinitely' When You Mean 'very'; Otherwise You'll Have No Word Left When You Want To Talk About Something Really Infinite.

Once People Stop Believing In God, The Problem Is Not That They Will Believe In Nothing; Rather, The Problem Is That They Will Believe Anything.

We Must Meet Children As Equals In That Area Of Our Nature Where We Are Their Equals...the Child As Reader Is Neither To Be Patronized Nor Idolized: We Talk To Him As Man To Man.

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

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

Agnostics Talk Cheerfully Of Man's Search For God But They Might As Well Talk About The Mouse's Search For The Cat.

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.

Our Merriment Must Be Of That Kind (and It Is, In Fact, The Merriest Kind) Which Exists Between People Who Have, From The Outset, Taken Each Other Seriously - No Flippancy, No Superiority, No Presumption. And Our Charity Must Be A Real And Costly Love, With Deep Feeling For The Sins In Spite Of Which We Love The Sinner - No Mere Tolerance Or Indulgence Which Parodies Love As Flippancy Parodies Merriment.

Good, As It Ripens, Becomes Continually More Different Not Only From Evil But From Other Good.

It Would Be Impossible To Accept Naturalism Itself If We Really And Consistently Believed Naturalism. For Naturalism Is A System Of Thought. But For Naturalism All Thoughts Are Mere Events With Irrational Causes. It Is, To Me At Any Rate, Impossible To Regard The Thoughts Which Make Up Naturalism In That Way And, At The Same Time, Regard Them As A Real Insight Into External Reality...if It Is True, Then We Can Know No Truths. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.

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

Losing Everything

A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading.

Forgive Us As We Forgive- We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse Gods Mercy For Ourselves.

Joy Bursts In Our Lives When We Go About Doing The Good At Hand And Not Trying To Manipulate Things And Times To Achieve Joy.

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

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

In Your Life You Meet People. Some You Never Think About Again. Some, You Wonder What Happened To Them. There Are Some That You Wonder If They Ever Think About You. And Then There Are Some That You Wish You Never Have To Think About Again. But You Do.

It May Well Be That By Trickery Of Priests Men Have Sometimes Taken A Mortal's Voice For A God's. But It Will Not Work The Other Way. No One Who Hears A God's Voice Takes It For A Man's.

When The Most Important Things In Our Life Happen We Quite Often Do Not Know, At The Moment, What Is Going On. A Man Does Not Always Say To Himself, "hullo! I'm Growing Up." It Is Only When He Looks Back That He Realises What Has Happened And Recognises It As What People Call "growing Up.

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.

Most Of Us Know What We Should Expect To Find In A Dragon's Lair, But, As I Said Before, Eustace Had Read Only The Wrong Books. They Had A Lot To Say About Exports And Imports And Governments And Drains, But They Were Weak On Dragons.

Even The Best Christian That Ever Lived Is Not Acting On His Own Steam--he Is Only Nourishing Or Protecting A Life He Could Never Have Acquired By His Own Efforts.

We Can Conceive Of A World In Which God Corrected The Results Of Abuse Of Free Will By His Creatures: So That A Wooden Beam Became Soft As Grass When Used As A Weapon... But Such A World Would Be One In Which Wrong Actions Were Impossible, And Therefore, Freedom Of The Will Would Be Void.

If You Never Take Risks, You'll Never Accomplish Great Things. Everybody Dies, But Not Everyone Has Lived.

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.

The Way For A Person To Develop A Style Is (a) To Know Exactly What He Wants To Say, And (b) To Be Sure He Is Saying Exactly That.

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

I Never Heard Weeping Like That Before Or After; Not From A Child, Nor A Man Wounded In The Palm, Nor A Tortured Man, Nor A Girl Dragged Off To Slavery From A Taken City. If You Heard The Woman You Most Hate In The World Weep So, You Would Go To Comfort Her. You Would Fight Your Way Through Fire And Spears To Reach Her. And I Knew Who Wept, And What Had Been Done To Her, And Who Had Done It.

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.

God, In The End, Gives People What They Most Want, Including Freedom From Himself. What Could Be More Fair?

Because We Love Something Else More Than This World, We Love Even This World More Than Those Who Know No Other.

The Very Power Of [textbook Writers] Depends On The Fact That They Are Dealing With A Boy: A Boy Who Thinks He Is ‘doing’ His ‘english Prep’ And Has No Notion That Ethics, Theology, And Politics Are All At Stake. It Is Not A Theory They Put Into His Mind, But An Assumption, Which Ten Years Hence, Its Origin Forgotten And Its Presence Unconscious, Will Condition Him To Take One Side In A Controversy Which He Has Never Recognized As A Controversy At All.

But If We Admit God, Must We Admit Miracle? Indeed, Indeed, You Have No Security Against It. That Is The Bargain. Theology Says To You In Effect, 'admit God And With Him The Risk Of A Few Miracles, And I In Return Will Ratify Your Faith In Uniformity As Regards The Overwhelming Majority Of Events.

By This Method Thousands Of Humans Have Been Brought To Think That Humility Means Pretty Women Trying To Believe They Are Ugly And Clever Men Trying To Believe They Are Fools. And Since What They Are Trying To Believe May, In Some Cases, Be Manifest Nonsense, They Cannot Succeed In Believing It And We Have The Chance Of Keeping Their Minds Endlessly Revolving On Themselves In An Effort To Achieve The The Impossible.

There Is No Use In Talking As If Forgiveness Were Easy. For We Find That The Work Of Forgiveness Has To Be Done Over And Over Again.

I Have Learned Now That While Those Who Speak About One's Miseries Usually Hurt, Those Who Keep Silence Hurt More.

To Interest Is The First Duty Of Art; No Other Excellences Will Ever Begin To Compensate For Failure In This.

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

I Am Only Trying To Call Attention To A Fact; The Fact That This Year, Of This Month, Or, More Likely, This Very Day, We Have Failed To Practice Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

You Don't Have A Soul. You Are A Soul. You Have A Body.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear. I Am Not Afraid, But The Sensation Is Like Being Afraid. The Same Fluttering In The Stomach, The Same Restlessness, The Yawning. I Keep On Swallowing.

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.

Only A Real Risk Tests The Reality Of A Belief.

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

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.

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.

A Society In Which Conjugal Infidelity Is Tolerated Must Always Be In The Long Run A Society Adverse To Women.

We Must Picture Hell As A State Where Everyone Is Perpetually Concerned About His Own Dignity And Advancement, Where Everyone Has A Grievance, And Where Everyone Lives The Deadly Serious Passions Of Envy, Self-importance, And Resentment.

The Event Of Falling In Love... In One High Bound It Has Overleaped The Massive Wall Of Our Selfhood; It Has Made Appetite Itself Altruistic, Tossed Personal Happiness Aside As A Triviality And Planted The Interests Of Another In The Centre Of Our Being.

Falling In Love

The Christian Has A Great Advantage Over Other Men, Not By Being Less Fallen Than They, Nor Less Doomed To Live In A Fallen World, But By Knowing That He Is A Fallen Man In A Fallen World.

Bad Art Is Never Really Enjoyed In The Same Sense In Which Good Art Is Enjoyed. It Is Only "liked": It Never Startles, Prostrates, And Takes Captive.

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

You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.

God's Love Is Not Wearied By Our Sins & Is Relentless In Its Determination That We Be Cured At Whatever Cost To Us Or Him

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.

Mere Improvement Is Not Redemption, Though Redemption Always Improves People

Many Things, Such As Loving, Going To Sleep, Or Behaving Unaffectedly - Are Done Worst When We Try Hardest To Do Them.

I Do Not Know Why There Is This Difference, But I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait. When You Do Enter Your Room, You Will Find That The Long Wait Has Done You Some Kind Of Good Which You Would Not Have Had Otherwise. But You Must Regard It As Waiting, Not As Camping. You Must Keep On Praying For Light: And Of Course, Even In The Hall, You Must Begin Trying To Obey The Rules Which Are Common To The Whole House. And Above All You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Paneling.

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

In Charn [jadis] Had Taken No Notice Of Polly (till The Very End) Because Digory Was The One She Wanted To Make Use Of. Now That She Had Uncle Andrew, She Took No Notice Of Digory. I Expect Most Witches Are Like That. They Are Not Interested In Things Or People Unless They Can Use Them; They Are Terribly Practical.

Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends?

If You Are A Christian, You Are Free To Think That All These Religions, Even The Queerest Ones, Contain At Least Some Hint Of The Truth.

There Is, Hidden Or Flaunted, A Sword Between The Sexes Till An Entire Marriage Reconciles Them.

All I Am In Private Life Is A Literary Critic And Historian, That's My Job...and I'm Prepared To Say On That Basis If Anyone Thinks The Gospels Are Either Legends Or Novels, Then That Person Is Simply Showing His Incompetence As A Literary Critic. I've Read A Great Many Novels And I Know A Fair Amount About The Legends That Grew Up Among Early People, And I Know Perfectly Well The Gospels Are Not That Kind Of Stuff.

What Flows Into You From Myth Is Not Truth But Reality (truth Is Always About Something, But Reality Is That About Which Truth Is), And Therefore, Every Myth Becomes The Father Of Innumerable Truths On The Abstract Level.

The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

Screwtape Letters

The Best Fruits Are Plucked For Each By Some Hand That Is Not His Own.

Enemy-occupied Territory---that Is What This World Is. Christianity Is The Story Of How The Rightful King Has Landed, You Might Say Landed In Disguise, And Is Calling Us To Take Part In A Great Campaign Of Sabotage.

There Are No Ordinary People.. It Is Immortals Whom We Joke With, Work With, Marry, Snub, And Exploit.

I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog.

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

Learning Experience

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.

It Is, Of Course, Quite True That God Will Not Love You Any Less, Or Have Less Use For You, If You Happen To Have Been Born With A Very Second-rate Brain.

Gone! And You And I Quite Crestfallen. It’s Always Like That, You Can’t Keep Him; It’s Not As If He Were A Tame Lion.

Authority Exercised With Humility, And Obedience Accepted With Delight Are The Very Lines Along Which Our Spirits Live.

Never Exaggerate. Never Say More Than You Really Mean.

I Could Never Have Gone Far In Any Science Because On The Path Of Every Science The Lion Mathematics Lies In Wait For You.

I Willingly Believe That The Damned Are, In One Sense, Successful, Rebels To The End; That The Doors Of Hell Are Locked On The Inside.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

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.

Above All Else , The Devil Can Not Stand To Be Mocked.

And Men Said That The Blood Of The Stars Flowed In Her Veins

We Know We Are Sinners, It Does Not Follow That We Are Saved.

Afflictions Are... If We Can So Take Them, Our Share In The Passion Of Christ

..(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.

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

The Thing Is To Rely On God. The Time Will Come When You Will Regard All This Misery As A Small Price To Pay For Having Been Brought To That Dependence. Meanwhile, The Trouble Is That Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Has Yet Been Done.

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.

Here, I Think, Lies Our Real Dilemma. Probably We Cannot, Certainly We Shall Not, Retrace Our Steps. We Are Tamed Animals (some With Kind, Some With Cruel, Masters) And Should Probably Starve If We Got Out Of Our Cage. That Is One Horn Of The Dilemma. But In An Increasingly Planned Society, How Much Of What I Value Can Survive? That Is The Other Horn.

And Yet All Loneliness, Angers, Hatreds, Envies, And Itchings That It Contains, If Rolled Into One Single Experience And Put Into The Scale Against The Least Moment Of The Joy That Is Felt By The Least In Heaven, Would Have No Weight That Could Be Registered At All. Bad Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad As Truly As Good Is Good.

You Would Not Have Called To Me Unless I Had Been Calling To You," Said The Lion.

If, As I Can't Help Suspecting, The Dead Also Feel The Pains Of Separation (and This May Be One Of Their Purgatorial Sufferings), Then For Both Lovers, And For All Pairs Of Lovers Without Exception, Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

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

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.

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

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.'

My Own Idea, For What It Is Worth, Is That All Sadness Which Is Not Either Arising From The Repentance Of A Concrete Sin And Hastening Towards Concrete Amendment Or Restitution, Or Else Arising From Pity And Hastening To Active Assistance, Is Simply Bad; And I Think We All Sin By Needlessly Disobeying The Apostolic Injunction To 'rejoice' As Much As By Anything Else. Humility, After The First Shock, Is A Cheerful Virtue.

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.

He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.

Love Is Something More Stern And Splendid Than Mere Kindness.

Many Thousands Of People Have Had The Experience Of Finding The First Friend, And It Is None The Less A Wonder; As Great A Wonder (pace The Novelists) As First Love, Or Even Greater.

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.

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.

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.

We Were Made To Be Neither Cerebral Men Nor Visceral Men, But Men. Not Beasts Nor Angels But Men - Things At Once Rational And Animal.

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.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'

It Is When We Notice The Dirt That God Is Most Present In Us; It Is The Very Sign Of His Presence.

But Do You Really Mean, Sir," Said Peter, "that There Could Be Other Worlds-all Over The Place, Just Round The Corner-like That?" "nothing Is More Probable," Said The Profesor, Taking Off His Spectacles And Beginning To Polish Them, While He Muttered To Himself, "i Wonder What They Do Teach Them At These Schools.

Most Of Us Need The Crutch At Times; But Of Course It Is Idiotic To Use The Crutch When Our Own Legs (our Own Loves, Tastes, Habits Etc.) Can Do The Journey On Their Own.

There Is Someone That I Love Even Though I Don't Approve Of What He Does. There Is Someone I Accept Though Some Of His Thoughts And Actions Revolt Me. There Is Someone I Forgive Though He Hurts The People I Love The Most. That Person Is......me.

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

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

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.... The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep On Bringing Us Back, Time After Time, To The Old Simple Principles Which We Are All So Anxious Not To See; Like Bringing A Horse Back And Back To The Fence It Has Refused To Jump Or Bringing A Child Back And Back To The Bit In Its Lesson That It Wants To Shirk.

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.

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."

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

Am I Lost Or Just Less Found?

God, Who Needs Nothing, Loves Into Existence Wholly Superfluous Creatures In Order That He May Love And Perfect Them.

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.

Safe?” Said Mr. Beaver; “don’t You Hear What Mrs. Beaver Tells You? Who Said Anything About Safe? ‘course He Isn’t Safe. But He’s Good. He’s The King, I Tell You.

Here Are Beauties Which Pierce Like Swords Or Burn Like Cold Iron. Here Is A Book [the Lord Of The Rings] Which Will Break Your Heart."

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.

This Is My Password," Said The King As He Drew His Sword. "the Light Is Dawning, The Lie Broken. Now Guard Thee, Miscreant, For I Am Tirian Of Narnia.

I Suggest To You That It Is Because God Loves Us That He Gives Us The Gift Of Suffering. Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World. You See, We Are Like Blocks Of Stone Out Of Which The Sculptor Carves The Forms Of Men. The Blows Of His Chisel, Which Hurt Us So Much Are What Make Us Perfect.

If God Is Satisfied With The Work, The Work May Be Satisfied With Itself.

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

It Is Christ Himself, Not The Bible, Who Is The True Word Of God. The Bible, Read In The Right Spirit And With The Guidance Of Good Teachers, Will Bring Us To Him.

This Must Be A Simply Enormous Wardrobe!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

Before We Can Be Cured We Must Want To Be Cured. Those Who Really Wish For Help Will Get It; But For Many Modern People Even The Wish Is Difficult.

Oh, I Can See It Happening, Age After Age, And Growing Worse The More You Reveal Your Beauty: The Son Turning His Back On The Mother And The Bride On Her Groom, Stolen Away By This Everlasting Calling, Calling, Calling Of The Gods. Taken Where We Can't Follow. It Would Be Far Better For Us If You Were Foul And Ravening. We'd Rather You Drank Their Blood Than Stole Their Hearts. We'd Rather They Were Ours And Dead Than Yours And Made Immortal.

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

Mortal Lovers Must Not Try To Remain At The First Step; For Lasting Passion Is The Dream Of A Harlot And From It We Wake In Despair.

Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.

I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

Christianity, If False, Is Of No Importance, And If True, Of Infinite Importance. The Only Thing It Cannot Be Is Moderately Important.

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