Background Image

...

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.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

By This Method Thousands

C. S. Lewis

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

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.

Dearest Daughter. I Knew You Would Not Be Long In Coming To Me. Joy Shall Be Yours.

Everywhere, Except In Theology, There Has Been A Vigorous Growth Of Skepticism About Skepticism Itself.

It Is Because They Have No Oyarsa,' Said One Of The Pupils. It Is Because Everyone Of Them Wants To Be A Little Oyarsa Himself,' Said Augray.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms.

When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

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.

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

In Gethsemane The Holiest Of All Petitioners Prayed Three Times That A Certain Cup Might Pass From Him. It Did Not.

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.

Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It.

Other Than Heaven, The Only Place Where One's Heart Is Completely Safe From The Dangers Of Love Is Hell.

Good People Know About Both Good And Evil: Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

It Was When I Was Happiest That I Longed Most...the Sweetest Thing In All My Life Has Been The Longing...to Find The Place Where All The Beauty Came From.

I Was The Lion Who Forced You To Join With Aravis. I Was The Cat Who Comforted You Among The Houses Of The Dead. I Was The Lion Who Drove The Jackals From You While You Slept. I Was The Lion Who Gave The Horses The New Strength Of Fear For The Last Mill So That You Should Reach King Lune In Time. And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

If Anyone Present Wishes To Make Me The Subject Of His Wit, I Am Very Much At His Service--with My Sword--whenever He Has Leisure.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.

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

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

[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.

By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!

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.

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.

A Sensible Human Once Said, "if People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit"; And Again, "she's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others You Can Always Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

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.

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

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

He Produced Mainly Three Results: Hatred, Terror, Adoration.

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

The Story Itself Should Force Its Moral Upon You. You Find Out What The Moral Is By Writing The Story.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest." He Also Said: "no Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally - And Often Far More - Worth Reading At The Age Of 50 And Beyond.

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?

The Harder You Tried Not To Think, The More You Thought.

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.

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

Affection Is Responsible For Nine-tenths Of Whatever Solid And Durable Happiness There Is In Our Lives.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

Man Must Endure His Going Hence.

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

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

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

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

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

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

Cobbles And Kettledrums! ...i Hope This Madness Isn't Going To End In A Moonlit Climb And Broken Necks.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely

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.

To Enter Heaven Is To Become More Human Than You Ever Succeeded In Being On Earth; To Enter Hell Is To Be Banished From Humanity. What Is Cast (or Casts Itself) Into Hell Is Not A Man: It Is 'remains.'

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Every Poem Can Be Considered In Two Ways--as What The Poet Has To Say, And As A Thing Which He Makes.

Disobedience To Conscience Is Voluntary; Bad Poetry, On The Other Hand, Is Usually Not Made On Purpose.

Man, Even Now, Can Do Wonders To Animals: My Cat And Dog Live Together In My House And Seem To Like It. It May Have Been One Of Man's Functions To Restore Peace To The Animal World, And If He Had Not Joined The Enemy He Might Have Succeeded In Doing So To An Extent Now Hardly Imaginable.

The Human Spirit Will Not Even Begin To Try To Surrender Self-will As Long As All Seems To Be Well With It. Now Error And Sin Both Have This Property, That The Deeper They Are The Less Their Victim Suspects Their Existence; They Are Masked Evil. Pain Is Unmasked, Unmistakable Evil; Every Man Knows That Something Is Wrong When He Is Being Hurt.

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

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.

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

Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.

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?

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

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.

My Argument Against God Was That The Universe Seemed So Cruel And Unjust. But How Had I Got This Idea Of Just And Unjust? A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line. What Was I Comparing This Universe With When I Called It Unjust?

God Is Not A Static Thing...but A Dynamic, Pulsating Activity, A Life, Almost A Kind Of Drama. Almost, If You Will Not Think Me Irreverent, A Kind Of Dance.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When A Single Particular Person Claims To A Different: 'what! You Far Too? I Assumed I Was The Only Real One Particular.

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

Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

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.

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.

If Our Deepest Desires Cannot Be Satisfied In This World, Then We Must Have Been Made For Another World.

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.

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

All Your Life An Unattainable Ecstasy Has Hovered Just Beyond The Grasp Of Your Consciousness. The Day Is Coming When You Will Wake To Find, Beyond All Hope, That You Have Attained It, Or Else, That It Was Within Your Reach And You Have Lost It Forever.

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.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

In A Sense It (christianity) Creates, Rather Than Solves, The Problem Of Pain, For Pain Would Be No Problem Unless Side By Side With Our Daily Experience Of This Painful World, We Had Received What We Think A Good Assurance That Ultimate Reality Is Righteousness And Loving.

God Can Show Himself As He Really Is Only To Real Men. And That Means Not Simply To Men Who Are Individually Good, But To Men Who Are United Together In A Body, Loving One Another, Helping One Another, Showing Him To One Another. For That Is What God Meant Humanity To Be Like; Like Players In One Band, Or Organs In One Body.

How Monotonously Alike All The Great Tyrants And Conquerors Have Been: How Gloriously Different Are The Saints.

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

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.

The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God. But Every Novelty Prevents This. It Fixes Our Attention On The Service Itself; And Thinking About Worship Is A Different Thing Than Worshipping ... 'tis Mad Idolatry That Makes The Service Greater Than The God.

What Do People Mean When They Say, 'i Am Not Afraid Of God Because I Know He Is Good'? Have They Never Even Been To A Dentist?

It Costs God Nothing, So Far As We Know, To Create Nice Things: But To Convert Rebellious Wills Cost Him Crucifixion.

Crucifixion Of Christ

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

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.

Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.

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

Not To Be, But To Seem, Virtuous - It Is A Formula Whose Utility We All Discovered In The Nursery.

It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.

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?

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.

There Are A Dozen Views About Everything Until You Know The Answer. Then There's Never More Than One.

Either The Day Must Come When Joy Prevails And All The Makers Of Misery Are No Longer Able To Infect It, Or Else, For Ever And Ever, The Makers Of Misery Can Destroy In Others The Happiness They Reject For Themselves.

In The Moral Sphere, Every Act Of Justice Or Charity Involves Putting Ourselves In The Other Person's Place And Thus Transcending Our Own Competitive Particularity.

..(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.

We Are What We Believe We Are.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

I Have Been Feeling Very Much Lately That Cheerful Insecurity Is What Our Lord Asks Of Us.

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.

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

You Must Therefore Zealously Guard In His Mind The Curious Assumption 'my Time Is My Own'. Let Him Have The Feeling That He Starts Each Day As The Lawful Possessor Of Twenty-four Hours. Let Him Feel As A Grievous Tax That Portion Of This Property Which He Has To Make Over To Him Employers, And As A Generous Donation That Further Portion Which H Allows To Religious Duties. But What He Must Never Be Permitted To Doubt Is That The Total From Which These Deductions Have Been Made Was, In Some Mysterious Sense, His Own Personal Birthright.

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.

The Value Of The Old Testament May Be Dependant On What Seems Its Imperfection. It May Repel One Use In Order That We May Be Forced To Use It In Another Way-to Find The Word In It...to Re-live, While We Read, The Whole Jewish Experience Of God's Gradual And Graded Self-revelation, To Feel The Very Contentions Between The Word And The Human Material Through Which It Works.

It's No Use Telling Us That Something Was 'mysterious' Or 'loathsome' Or 'awe-inspiring' Or 'voluptuous.' By Direct Description, By Metaphor And Simile, By Secretly Evoking Powerful Associations, By Offering The Right Stimuli To Our Nerves (in The Right Degree And The Right Order), And By The Very Beat And Vowel-melody And Length And Brevity Of Your Sentences, You Must Bring It About That We, We Readers, Not You, Exclaim, 'how Mysterious!' Or 'loathsome' Or Whatever It Is. Let Me Taste For Myself, And You'll Have No Need To Tell Me How I Should React.

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness.

The Only Palliative Is To Keep The Clean Sea Breeze Of The Centuries Blowing Through Our Minds, And This Can Be Done Only By Reading Old Books.

Falling In Love Is Something That Happens To Us, Being Is Love Is Something We Do. No Passion Is Self Preservatory.

Falling In Love

[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.

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.

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.

God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

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

The Naturalists Have Been Engaged In Thinking About Nature. They Have Not Attended To The Fact That They Were Thinking. The Moment One Attends To This It Is Obvious That One's Own Thinking Cannot Be Merely A Natural Event, And That Therefore Something Other Than Nature Exists. The Supernatural Is Not Remote Or Abstruse; It Is A Matter Of Daily And Hourly Experience, As Intimate As Breathing.

Thirst Was Made For Water. Inquiry For Truth.

The Process Of Living Seems To Consist In Coming To Realize Truths So Ancient And Simple That, If Stated, They Sound Like Barren Platitudes.

We Do Not See Into Men’s Hearts. We Cannot Judge, And Are Indeed Forbidden To Judge.

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

We All Want Progress, But If You're On The Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing An About-turn And Walking Back To The Right Road; In That Case, The Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is The Most Progressive.

What He Says, Even On His Knees, About His Own Sinfulness Is All Parrot Talk. At Bottom, He Still Believes He Has Run Up A Very Favorable Credit-balance In The Enemy's Ledger By Allowing Himself To Be Converted, And Thinks That He Is Showing Great Humility And Condescension In Going To Church With These 'smug', Commonplace Neighbors At All.

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

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

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

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

As A Christian I Take It For Granted That Human History Will Some Day End; And I Am Offering Omniscience No Advice As To The Best Date For That Consummation.

The Opposite Of Love Is Not Hate, But Power

If We Will Not Learn To Eat The Only Food That The Universe Grows...then We Must Starve Eternally.

Perhaps Your Own Reiterated Cries Deafen You To The Voice You Hoped To Hear

Of Course It Should Be Pointed Out That, Though All Salvation Is Through Jesus, We Need Not Conclude That He Cannot Save Those Who Have Not Explicitly Accepted Him In This Life.

Fine Feelings, New Insights, Greater Interest In ʿreligionʾ Mean Nothing Unless They Make Our Actual Behavior Better.

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

You Can't Go Back And Change The Beginning, But You Can Start Where You Are And Change The Ending.

Please Will You Do My Job For Me.

A Spoiled Saint, A Pharisee, An Inquisitor, Or A Magician, Makes Better Sport To Hell Than A Mere Common Tyrant Or Debauchee.

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.

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy.

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

Humans Are Amphibians - Half Spirit And Half Animal. As Spirits They Belong To The Eternal World, But As Animals They Inhabit Time.

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.

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

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

Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering, Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

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.

I Do Not Expect Old Heads On Young Shoulders.

What Does Not Satisfy When We Find It, Was Not The Thing We Were Desiring.

If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity.

You'll Never Make A Good Impression On Other People Until You Stop Thinking What Sort Of Impression You Make.

Ideally, We Should Like To Define A Good Book As One Which 'permits, Invites, Or Compels' Good Reading

God Doesn't Want Something From Us. He Simply Wants Us.

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

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

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

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

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

If We Accept Heaven We Shall Not Be Able To Retain Even The Smallest And Most Intimate Souvenirs Of Hell.

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

...this New Idea Of Cure Instead Of Punishment, So Humane In Seeming, Had In Fact Deprived The Criminal Of All Rights And By Taking Away The Name Punishment Made The Thing Infinite.

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

All Killing Is Not Murder Any More Than All Sexual Intercourse Is Adultery.

Unless The Religious Claims Of The Bible Are Again Acknowledged, Its Literary Claims Will, I Think, Be Given Only 'mouth Honour' And That Decreasingly.

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.

Of Course Language Is Not An Infallible Guide, But It Contains, With All Its Defects, A Good Deal Of Stored Insight And Experience.

If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Be Set To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

Friends Are Seldom Found; They Are Made.

The Future Is, Of All Things, The Thing Least Like Eternity. It Is The Most Temporal Part Of Time--for The Past Is Frozen And No Longer Flows, And The Present Is All Lit Up With Eternal Rays.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

The Castle Of Cair Paravel On Its Little Hill Towered Up Above Them; Before Them Were The Sands, With Rocks And Little Pools Of Salt Water, And Seaweed, And The Smell Of The Sea And Long Miles Of Bluish-green Waves Breaking For Ever And Ever On The Beach. And Oh, The Cry Of The Seagulls! Have You Ever Heard It? Can You Remember?

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

Being In Love Is A Good Thing, But It Is Not The Best Thing. There Are Many Things Below It, But There Are Also Things Above It. You Cannot Make It The Basis Of A Whole Life. It Is A Noble Feeling, But It Is Still A Feeling. Now No Feeling Can Be Relied On To Last In Its Full Intensity, Or Even To Last At All. Knowledge Can Last, Principles Can Last, Habits Can Last; But Feelings Come And Go.

Poetry Too Is A Little Incarnation, Giving Body To What Had Been Before Invisible And Inaudible.

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

I Have No Duty To Be Anyone's Friend And No Man In The World Has A Duty To Be Mine. No Claims, No Shadow Of Necessity. Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art, Like The Universe Itself (for God Did Not Need To Create). It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things Which Give Value To Survival.

In Reality, Moral Rules Are Directions For Running The Human Machine. Every Moral Rule Is There To Prevent A Breakdown, Or A Strain, Or A Friction, In The Running Of That Machine. That Is Why These Rules At First Seem To Be Constantly Interfering With Our Natural Inclinations.

It Is No Disparagement To The Garden To Say It Will Not Fence And Weed Itself, Nor Prune Its Own Fruit Trees, Nor Roll And Cut Its Own Lawns...it Will Remain A Garden Only If Someone Does All These Things To It...if You Want To See The Difference Between [the Garden's] Contribution And The Gardener's, Put The Commonest Weed It Grows Side By Side With His Hoes Rakes, Shears, And A Packet Of Weed Killer; You Have Put Beauty, Energy, And Fecundity Beside Dead, Steril Things. Just So, Our 'decency And Common Sense' Show Grey And Deathlike Beside The Geniality Of Love.

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

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World.

Screwtape Letters

You Would Not Call A Man Humane For Ceasing To Set Mousetraps If He Did So Because He Believed There Were No Mice In The House.

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.

A Dragon Has Just Flown Over The Tree-tops And Lighted On The Beach. Yes, I Am Afraid It Is Between Us And The Ship. And Arrows Are No Use Against Dragons. And They're Not At All Afraid Of Fire." "with Your Majesty's Leave-" Began Reepicheep. "no, Reepicheep," Said The King Very Firmly, "you Are Not To Attempt A Single Combat With It.

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.

There Seems To Be Hardly Any One Among My Acquaintance From Whom I Have Not Learned.

All Joy... Emphasizes Our Pilgrim Status; Always Reminds, Beckons, Awakens Desire. Our Best Havings Are Wantings.

A Concentrated Mind And A Sitting Body Make For Better Prayer Than A Kneeling Body And A Mind Half Asleep.

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

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.

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 Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. Our Charities Should Pinch And Hamper Us. If We Live At The Same Level Of Affluence As Other People Who Have Our Level Of Income, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little.

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)

What Can You Ever Really Know Of Other People's Souls — Of Their Temptations, Their Opportunities, Their Struggles? One Soul In The Whole Of Creation You Do Know: And It Is The Only One Whose Fate Is Placed In Your Hands. If There Is A God, You Are, In A Sense, Alone With Him.

Trending Author

Zooey Deschanel

Category