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

-C. S. Lewis

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But As For Aslan

C. S. Lewis

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

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Every Time You Make A Choice You Are Turning The Central Part Of You, The Part Of You That Chooses, Into Something A Little Different From What It Was Before. And Taking Your Life As A Whole, With All Your Innumerable Choices, All Your Life Long You Are Slowly Turning This Central Thing Either Into A Heavenly Creature Or Into A Hellish Creature...

The Notion That Everyone Would Like Christianity To Be True, And Therefore All Atheists Are Brave Men Who Have Accepted The Defeat Of All Their Deepest Desires, Is Simply Impudent Nonsense.

So Many Things--nay Every Real Thing--is Good If Only It Will Be Humble And Ordinate.

As Image And Apprehension Are In Organic Unity, So, For A Christian, Are Human Body And Human Soul.

I Felt Ashamed." "but Of What? Psyche, They Hadn't Stripped You Naked Or Anything?" "no, No, Maia. Ashamed Of Looking Like A Mortal -- Of Being A Mortal." "but How Could You Help That?" "don't You Think The Things People Are Most Ashamed Of Are Things They Can't Help?

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?

Once When I Had Remarked On The Affection Quite Often Found Between Cat And Dog, My Friend Replied, "yes. But I Bet No Dog Would Ever Confess It To The Other Dogs.

I#pray Because The Need Flows Out Of Me All The Time-walking And Sleeping. It Does Not Change #‎ God - It Changes Me.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You "love" Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did.

The Demand Of The Loveless And The Self-imprisoned That They Should Be Allowed To Blackmail The Universe: That Till They Consent To Be Happy (on Their Own Terms) No One Else Shall Taste Joy: That Theirs Should Be The Final Power; That Hell Should Be Able To Veto Heaven.

Whatever You Do, He Will Make Good Of It. But Not The Good He Had Prepared For You If You Had Obeyed Him.

The Old Field Of Space, Time, Matter, And The Senses Is To Be Weeded, Dug, And Sown For A New Crop. We May Be Tired Of That Old Field: God Is Not.

A Man Who Has Been In Another World Does Not Come Back Unchanged. One Can't Put The Difference Into Words. When The Man Is A Friend It May Become Painful: The Old Footing Is Not Easy To Recover.

Christianity Does Not Involve The Belief That All Things Were Made For Man. It Does Involve The Belief That God Loves Man And For His Sake Became Man And Died.

They Did Nothing Wrong Their Time Here Has Ended

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

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

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

When The Whole World Is Running Towards A Cliff, He Who Is Running In The Opposite Direction Appears To Have Lost His Mind.

Much Of The Modern Resistance To Chastity Comes From Men's Belief That They 'own' Their Bodies—those Vast And Perilous Estates, Pulsating With The Energy That Made The Worlds, In Which They Find Themselves Without Their Consent And From Which They Are Ejected At The Pleasure Of Another!

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

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.

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

The State Exists Simply To Promote And To Protect The Ordinary Happiness Of Human Beings In This Life. A Husband And Wife Chatting Over A Fire, A Couple Of Friends Having A Game Of Darts In A Pub, A Man Reading A Book In His Own Room Or Digging In His Own Garden-that Is What The State Is There For. And Unless They Are Helping To Increase And Prolong And Protect Such Moments, All The Laws, Parliaments, Armies, Courts, Police, Economics, Etc., Are Simply A Waste Of Time.

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

Christ Did Not Die For Man Because They Were Intrinsically Worth Dying For, But Because He Is Intrinsically Love, And Therefore Loves Infinitely.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed-this Is The Hardest Of All Temptations To Resist

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

A Thing May Be Morally Neutral And Yet The Desire For That Thing May Be Dangerous.

Nobody Who Gets Enough Food And Clothing In A World Where Most Are Hungry And Cold Has Any Business To Talk About 'misery.'

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

Aslan's Instructions Always Work; There Are No Exceptions.

The Longer We Stay In Hell, The More We Become Attached To It.

Atheists Express Their Rage Against God Although In Their View He Does Not Exist.

Christian Inspirational

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World

The False Religion Of Lust Is Baser Than The False Religion Of Mother-love Or Patriotism Or Art: But Lust Is Less Likely To Be Made Into A Religion.

With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.

Your Majesty Would Have A Perfect Right To Strike Off His Head," Said Peridan. "such An Assault As He Made Puts Him On A Level With Assassins." "it Is Very True," Said Edmund. "but Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did." And He Looked Very Thoughtful.

We Make Men Without Chests And Expect From Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst.

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Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

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

Oh, Adam’s Sons, How Cleverly You Defend Yourselves Against All That Might Do You Good!

You Are Certainly Under The Guidance Of The Holy Ghost Or You Wouldn't Have Come Where You Now Are.

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A Noble Hunger, Long Unsatisfied, Met At Last Its Proper Food.

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Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers. If You Are Thinking Of Becoming A Christian, I Warn You You Are Embarking On Something Which Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

All Mortals Tend To Turn Into The Thing They Are Pretending To Be. This Is Elementary

Screwtape Letters

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

I Thought I Could Describe A State; Make A Map Of Sorrow. Sorrow, However, Turns Out To Be Not A State, But A Process. It Needs Not A Map, But A History, And If I Don't Stop Writing That History At Some Quite Arbitrary Point, There's No Reason Why I Should Ever Stop.

That Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporal Sufferring, "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.

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He Is Not The Soul Of Nature, Nor Any Part Of Nature. He Inhabits Eternity: He Dwells In A High And Holy Place: Heaven Is His Throne, Not His Vehicle, Earth Is His Footstool, Not His Vesture. One Day He Will Dismantle Both And Make A New Heaven And Earth. He Is Not To Be Identified Even With The 'divine Spark' In Man. He Is 'god And Not Man.

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

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

The Devil Loves 'curing' A Small Fault By Giving You A Great One.

Friendship Is...the Sort Of Love One Can Imagine Between Angels.

It's So Large" "it's The World Dear, Did You Think It'd Be Small?" "smaller

Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.

Love Is Not Affectionate Feeling, But A Steady Wish For The Loved Person's Ultimate Good As Far As It Can Be Obtained.

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Her Face Was Working And Twitching With Passion, But His Looked Up At The Sky, Still Quiet, Neither Angry Nor Afraid, But A Little Sad.

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest.

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.

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

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.

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

That Is Why Christians Are Told Not To Judge. We See Only The Results Which A Man's Choices Make Out Of His Raw Material. But God Does Not Judge Him On The Raw Material At All, But On What He Has Done With It.

Come, Live With Me And You'll Know Me.

The Game Is To Have Them All Running About With Fire Extinguishers When There Is A Flood, And All Crowding To That Side Of The Boat Which Is Already Nearly Gunwale Under.

If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business.

To Please God… To Be A Real Ingredient In The Divine Happiness… To Be Loved By God, Not Merely Pitied, But Delighted In As An Artist Delights In His Work Or A Father In A Son- It Seems Impossible, A Weight Or Burden Of Glory Which Our Thoughts Can Hardly Sustain. But So It Is.

The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred

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.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.

The Prayer Preceding All Prayers Is 'may It Be The Real I Who Speaks. May It Be The Real Thou That I Speak To.'

Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.

If You Examined A Hundred People Who Had Lost Their Faith In Christianity, I Wonder How Many Of Them Would Turn Out To Have Reasoned Out Of It By Honest Argument? Do Not Most People Simply Drift Away?

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

Grief Is Like A Long Valley, A Winding Valley Where Any Bend May Reveal A Totally New Landscape.

For In Grief Nothing "stays Put." One Keeps On Emerging From A Phase, But It Always Recurs. Round And Round. Everything Repeats. Am I Going In Circles, Or Dare I Hope I Am On A Spiral? But If A Spiral, Am I Going Up Or Down It? How Often -- Will It Be For Always? -- How Often Will The Vast Emptiness Astonish Me Like A Complete Novelty And Make Me Say, "i Never Realized My Loss Till This Moment"? The Same Leg Is Cut Off Time After Time.

In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

Be Sure That The Ins And Outs Of Your Individuality Are No Mystery To Him; And One Day They Will No Longer Be A Mystery To You.

The Moment Good Taste Knows Itself, Some Of Its Goodness Is Lost.

Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

Now The Trouble About Trying To Make Yourself Stupider Than You Really Are Is That You Very Often Succeed.

There Is Nothing Like Suspense And Anxiety For Barricading A Human's Mind Against The Enemy. He Wants Men To Be Concerned With What They Do; Our Business Is To Keep Them Thinking About What Will Happen To Them.

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.

Of Course, We Are To Pray For Spiritual Awakening, And In Various Ways We Can Do Something Toward It. But We Must Remember That Neither Paul Nor Apollos Gives The Increase.

We Must Beware Of The Past, Mustn't We? I Mean That Any Fixing Of The Mind On Old Evils Beyond What Is Absolutely Necessary For Repenting Our Own Sins And Forgiving Those Of Others Is Certainly Useless And Usually Bad For Us. Notice In Dante That The Lost Souls Are Entirely Concerned With Their Past! Not So The Saved.

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.

We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.

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.'

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

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

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.

Extraordinary Things Only Happen To Extraordinary People. Maybe It's A Sign That You've Got An Extraordinary Destiny--something Greater Than You Could've Imagined.

Extraordinary Things

I Object To That Remark Very Strongly! - The Magician's Nephew

First, I Do Not Sit Down At My Desk To Put Into Verse Something That Is Already Clear In My Mind. If It Were Clear In My Mind, I Should Have No Incentive Or Need To Write About It. We Do Not Write In Order To Be Understood; We Write In Order To Understand.

But How Can The Characters In A Play Guess The Plot? We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage. To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are "on" Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.

Emerson Said, Do You Love Me? Means Do You See The Same Truth?-or At Least, "do You Care About The Same Truth?

One Must Never Be Either Content With, Or Impatient With, Oneself.

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

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.

The Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do.

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.

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

God Has Not Been Trying An Experiment On My Faith Or Love In Order To Find Out Their Quality. He Knew It Already. It Was I Who Didn't. In This Trial He Makes Us Occupy The Dock, The Witness Box, And The Bench All At Once. He Always Knew That My Temple Was A House Of Cards. His Only Way Of Making Me Realize The Fact Was To Knock It Down.

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

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

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.

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

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

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

At Home, Besides Being Peter Or Jane, We Also Bear A General Character; Husband Or Wife, Brother Or Sister, Chief, Colleague Or Subordinate. Not Among Friends. It Is An Affair Of Disentangled, Or Stripped, Minds. Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 Sane Would Do No Good If They Made Themselves Mad To Help Madmen.

What Would Really Satisfy Us Would Be A God Who Said Of Anything We Happened To Like Doing, 'what Does It Matter So Long As They Are Contented?'

Of Course All Children's Literature Is Not Fantastic, So All Fantastic Books Need Not Be Children's Books. It Is Still Possible, Even In An Age So Ferociously Anti-romantic As Our Own, To Write Fantastic Stories For Adults: Though You Will Usually Need To Have Made A Name In Some More Fashionable Kind Of Literature Before Anyone Will Publish Them.

I Wonder If People Who Asked For God To Intervene In Our World, Really Know What They Are Asking. Will They Want To Be There When God Really Does Intervene?

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gifts...thus A Heavy Task Is Laid Upon Gift-love. It Must Work Toward Its Own Abdication. We Must Aim At Making Ourselves Superfluous. The Hour When We Can Say 'they Need Me No Longer' Should Be Our Reward. But The Instinct, Simply In Its Own Nature, Has No Power To Fulfill This Law.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Wouldn't Be A Great Moral Teacher. He'd Be Either A Lunatic On A Level With A Man Who Says He's A Poached Egg Or Else He'd Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse.

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

My Friendship You Shall Have, Leanred Man," Piped Reepicheep. "and Any Dwarf--or Giant---in The Army Who Does Not Give You Good Language Shall Have My Sword To Reckon With.

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.

Make Your Choice, Adventurous Stranger, Strike The Bell And Bide The Danger, Or Wonder, Till It Drives You Mad, What Would Have Followed If You Had.

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.

More Like The Real Thing,' Said The Lord Digory Softly. - The Last Battle

You Never Know What You Can Do Until You Try, And Very Few Try Unless They Have To.

Perfect Goodness Can Never Debate About The End To Be Attained, And Perfect Wisdom Cannot Debate About The Means Most Suited To Achieve It.

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

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable. How Many Hours Are In A Mile? Is Yellow Square Or Round? Probably Half The Questions We Ask - Half Our Great Theological And Metaphysical Problems - Are Like That.

There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.

Someone You Love

I Sometimes Wonder Whether All Pleasures Are Not Substitutes For Joy.

We Are Finite And God Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

All Possible Knowledge, Then, Depends On The Validity Of Reasoning...unless Human Reasoning Is Valid No Science Can Be True.

Necessity May Not Be The Opposite Of Freedom, And Perhaps A Man Is Most Free When, Instead Of Producing Motives, He Could Only Say, "i Am What I Do.

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.

Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.

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

I Know Now, Lord, Why You Utter No Answer. You Are Yourself The Answer. Before Your Face Questions Die Away. What Other Answer Would Suffice?

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.

We Do Not Want To Merely “see” Beauty. We Want To Be United With It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Become Part Of It.

Now We Cannot...discover Our Failure To Keep God's Law Except By Trying Our Very Hardest (and Then Failing). Unless We Really Try, Whatever We Say There Will Always Be At The Back Of Our Minds The Idea That If We Try Harder Next Time We Shall Succeed In Being Completely Good. Thus, In One Sense, The Road Back To God Is A Road Of Moral Effort, Of Trying Harder And Harder. But In Another Sense It Is Not Trying That Is Ever Going Tobring Us Home. All This Trying Leads Up To The Vital Moment At Which You Turn To God And Say, "you Must Do This. I Can't.

There Is One Bit Of Advice Given Us By The Ancient Greeks, And By The Jews In The Old Testament, And By The Great Christian Teachers Of The Middle Ages, Which The Modern Economic System Has Completely Disobeyed. All These People Told Us Not To Lend Money At Interest; And Lending Money At Interest - What We Call Investment - Is The Basis Of Our Whole System.

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.

Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.

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

He Wants Them To Learn To Walk And Must Therefore Take Away His Hand.

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The Smallest Good Act Today Is The Capture Of A Strategic Point From Which, A Few Months Later, You May Be Able To Go On To Victories You Never Dreamed Of.

Every Contact You Make With Everyone You Meet Will Help Them Or Hinder Them On Their Journey To Heaven.

I See You Are An Idiot, Whatever Else You May Be.

Lion Witch Wardrobe

I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.

I Am Suffering Incessant Temptations To Uncharitable Thoughts At Present; One Of Those Black Moods In Which Nearly All One's Friends Seem To Be Selfish Or Even False. And How Terrible That There Should Be Even A Kind Of Pleasure In Thinking Evil.

Those Of Us Who Are Blamed When Old For Reading Childish Books Were Blamed When Children For Reading Books Too Old For Us.

Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art... It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things That Give Value To Survival.

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.

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.

God Is Love, And That Love Works Through Men-especially Through The Whole Community Of Christians.

While We Are Actually Subjected To Them, The 'moods' And 'spirits' Of Nature Point No Morals. Overwhelming Gaiety, Insupportable Grandeur, Sombre Desolation Are Flung At You. Make What You Can Of Them, If You Must Make At All. The Only Imperative That Nature Utters Is, 'look. Listen. Attend.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

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.

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

Non-christians Seem To Think That The Incarnation Implies Some Particular Merit Or Excellence In Humanity. But Of Course It Implies Just The Reverse: A Particular Demerit And Depravity. No Creature That Deserved Redemption Would Need To Be Redeemed. They That Are Whole Need Not The Physician. Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

For Narnia And For Aslan!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

No Time For Better Words, No Time To Unsay Anything. -til We Have Faces

Those Who Would Like The God Of Scripture To Be More Purely Ethical, Do Not Know What They Ask.

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

What We Want Is Not More Little Books About Christianity, But More Little Books By Christians On Other Subjects--with Their Christianity Latent.

If War Is Ever Lawful, Then Peace Is Sometimes Sinful.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

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

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

One Road Leads Home And A Thousand Roads Lead Into The Wilderness.

The Divine Nature Wounds And Perhaps Destroys Us Merely By Being What It Is.

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

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'.

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

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.

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.

Safety And Happiness Can Only Come From Individuals, Classes, And Nations Being Honest And Fair And Kind To Each Other.

I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.

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