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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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Critics Who Treat Adult

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?

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

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

If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing-rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.

[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.

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.

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

The Best Swordsman In The World May Be Disarmed By A Trick That's New To Him.

Naturally, Since I Myself Am A Writer, I Do Not Wish The Ordinary Reader To Read No Modern Books. But If He Must Read Only The New Or Only The Old, I Would Advise Him To Read The Old.

Walking And Talking Are Two Very Great Pleasures, But It Is A Mistake To Combine Them. Our Own Noise Blots Out The Sounds And Silences Of The Outdoor World; And Talking Leads Almost Inevitably To Smoking, And Then Farewell To Nature As Far As One Of Our Senses Is Concerned. The Only Friend To Walk With Is One Who So Exactly Shares Your Taste For Each Mood Of The Countryside That A Glance, A Halt, Or At Most A Nudge, Is Enough To Assure Us That The Pleasure Is Shared.

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.

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

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.

Quarrelling Means Trying To Show That The Other Man Is In The Wrong. (and) There Is No Sense In Trying To Do That Unless You And He Had Some Sort Of Agreement As To What Righ And Wrong Are.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point, Which Means, At The Point Of Highest Reality. A Chastity Or Honesty Or Mercy Which Yields To Danger Will Be Chaste Or Honest Or Merciful Only On Conditions. Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.

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

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

Remember, He Is Not, Like You, A Pure Spirit. Never Having Been A Human (oh That Abominable Advantage Of The Enemy's) You Don't Realize How Enslaved They Are To The Pressure Of The Ordinary.

All The Things That Have Ever Deeply Possessed Your Soul Have Been But Hints Of It, Tantalizing Glimpses, Promises Never Quite Fulfilled, Echoes That Died Away Just As They Caught Your Ear. But If It Should Really Become Manifest - If There Ever Came An Echo That Did Not Die Away But Swelled Into The Sound Itself - You Would Know It. Beyond All Possibility Of Doubt You Would Say 'here At Last Is The Thing I Was Made For.'

Aren't All These Notes The Senseless Writings Of A Man Who Won't Accept The Fact That There Is Nothing We Can Do With Suffering Except To Suffer It?

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.

Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself; Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

There Are Far, Far Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

You All Know," Said The Guide, "that Security Is Mortals' Greatest Enemy.

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

A Perfect Man Would Never Act From A Sense Of Duty; He’d Always Want The Right Thing More Than The Wrong One. Duty Is Only A Substitute For Love (of God And Of Other People) Like A Crutch Which Is A Substitute For A Leg. 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.

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.

We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us.

The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.

Well, Whatever They Say, You Don't Feel Like Ghosts.

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.

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.

Feelings, And Feelings, And Feelings. Let Me Try Thinking Instead.

To Love You As I Should, I Must Worship God As Creator.

Has This World Been So Kind To You That You Should Leave With Regret? There Are Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

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

Believe In God Like You Believe In The Sunrise. Not Because You Can See It, But Because You Can See All It Touches.

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.

Since I Am I, I Must Make An Act Of Self-surrender, However Small Or However Easy, In Living To God Rather Than To My Self.

At Other Times It Feels Like Being Mildly Drunk, Or Concussed. There Is A Sort Of Invisible Blanket Between The World And Me. I Find It Hard To Take In What Anyone Says.

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.

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

Every Good Book Should Be Entertaining. A Good Book Will Be More; It Must Not Be Less. Entertainment…is Like A Qualifying Examination. If A Fiction Can’t Provide That, We May Be Excused From Inquiring Into Its Higher Qualities.

Getting Over A Painful Experience Is Much Like Crossing Monkey Bars. You Have To Let Go At Some Point In Order To Move Forward.

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

We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe.

We Are All Fallen Creatures And All Very Hard To Live With.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

Every Natural Love Will Rise Again And Live Forever In This Country: But None Will Rise Again Until It Has Been Buried.

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

The More We Let God Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become - Because He Made Us. He Invented Us. He Invented All The Different People That You And I Were Intended To Be. . .it Is When I Turn To Christ, When I Give Up Myself To His Personality, That I First Begin To Have A Real Personality Of My Own.

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

Ah, You've Come Over The Water. Powerful Wet Stuff, Ain't It?

When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

A Silly Idea Is Current That Good People Do Not Know What Temptation Means. This Is An Obvious Lie. Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is... A Man Who Gives In To Temptation After Five Minutes Simply Does Not Know What It Would Have Been Like An Hour Later. That Is Why Bad People, In One Sense, Know Very Little About Badness. They Have Lived A Sheltered Life By Always Giving In.

If No Set Of Moral Ideas Were Truer Or Better Than Any Other, There Would Be No Sense In Preferring Civilised Morality To Savage Morality.

If You Are Worried About The People Outside, The Most Unreasonable Thing You Can Do Is Remain Outside Yourself. Christians Are Christ's Body...every Addition To That Body Enables Him To Do More. If You Want To Help Those Outside You Must Add Your Own Little Cell To The Body Of Christ Who Along Can Help Them. Cutting Off A Man's Fingers Would Be A Odd Way Of Getting Him To Do More Work.

Peter Did Not Feel Very Brave; Indeed, He Felt He Was Going To Be Sick. But That Made No Difference To What He Had To Do.

The Man Is A Humbug — A Vulgar, Shallow, Self-satisfied Mind, Absolutely Inaccessible To The Complexities And Delicacies Of The Real World. He Has The Journalist's Air Of Being A Specialist In Everything, Of Taking In All Points Of View And Being Always On The Side Of The Angels: He Merely Annoys A Reader Who Has The Least Experience Of Knowing Things, Of What Knowing Is Like. There Is Not Two Pence Worth Of Real Thought Or Real Nobility In Him. But He Isn't Dull.

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

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

Chronological Snobbery Is The Uncritical Acceptance Of The Intellectual Climate Common To Our Own Age And The Assumption That Whatever Has Gone Out Of Date Is On That Account Discredited. You Must Find Why It Went Out Of Date. Was It Ever Refuted (and If So By Whom, Where, And How Conclusively), Or Did It Merely Die Away As Fashions Do? If The Latter, This Tells Us Nothing About Its Truth Or Falsehood.

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

The Grave And The Image Are Equally Links With The Irrecoverable And Symbols For The Unimaginable.

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.

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

Many A Man, Brought Up In The Glib Profession Of Some Shallow Form Of Christianity, Who Comes Through Reading Astronomy To Realize For The First Time How Majestically Indifferent Most Reality Is To Man, And Who Perhaps Abandons His Religion On That Account, May At That Moment Be Having His First Genuinely Religious Experience.

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.

She Stepped Out From Among Their Shifting Confusion Of Lovely Lights And Shadows. A Circle Of Grass, Smooth As A Lawn, Met Her Eyes, With Dark Trees Dancing All Around It. And Then --oh Joy! For He Was There: The Huge Lion, Shining White In The Moonlight, With His Huge Black Shadow Underneath Him.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.

Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.

The New Testament Writers Speak As If Christ's Achievement In Rising From The Dead Was The First Event Of Its Kind In The Whole History Of The Universe. He Is The 'first Fruits,' The Pioneer Of Life,' He Has Forced Open A Door That Has Been Locked Since The Death Of The First Man. He Has Met, Fought, And Beaten The King Of Death. Everything Is Different Because He Has Done So.

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

The More Often He Feels Without Acting, The Less He Will Be Able Ever To Act, And, In The Long Run, The Less He Will Be Able To Feel.

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?

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

The Mouse Is A Fair Treat But This One Would Talk The Hind Legs Off A Donkey.

It Would Be Nice And Fairly Nearly True, To Say That 'from That Time Forth, Eustace Was A Different Boy.' To Be Strictly Accurate, He Began To Be A Different Boy. He Had Relapses. There Were Still Many Days When He Could Be Very Tiresome. But Most Of Those I Shall Not Notice. The Cure Had Begun.

A Man Can Eat His Dinner Without Understanding Exactly How Food Nourishes Him. A Man Can Accept What Christ Has Done Without Knowing How It Works: Indeed, He Certainly Would Not Know How It Works Until He Has Accepted It.

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

One Of Our Great Allies At Present Is The Church Itself. Do Not Misunderstand Me. I Do Not Mean The Church As We See Her Spread Out Through All Time And Space And Rooted In Eternity, Terrible As An Army With Banners. That, I Confess, Is A Spectacle Which Makes Our Boldest Tempters Uneasy. But Fortunately It Is Quite Invisible To These Humans.

Heaven Offers Nothing That A Mercenary Soul Can Desire.

The Value Of Myth Is That It Takes All The Things You Know And Restores To Them The Rich Significance Which Has Been Hidden By The Veil Of Familiarity.

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.

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

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

Friendship Exhibits A Glorious "nearness By Resemblance" To Heaven Itself Where The Very Multitude Of The Blessed (which No Man Can Number) Increases The Fruition Which Each Has Of God. For Every Soul, Seeing Him In Her Own Way, Doubtless Communicates That Unique Vision To All The Rest. That, Says An Old Author, Is Why The Seraphim In Isaiah's Vision Are Crying "holy, Holy, Holy" To One Another (isaiah Vi, 3). The More We Thus Share The Heavenly Bread Between Us, The More We Shall All Have.

The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.

He (god) Loved Us Not Because We Are Lovable, But Because He Is Love.

Why Love If Losing Hurts So Much? We Love To Know That We Are Not Alone.

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

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

To Move With The Times Is, Of Course, To Go Where All Times Go.

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.

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

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.

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

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

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

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.

If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be; If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All

Children Are Not Deceived By Fairy-tales; They Are Often And Gravely Deceived By School-stories. Adults Are Not Deceived By Science-fiction ; They Can Be Deceived By The Stories In The Women's Magazines.

You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best

We Have Made Men Proud Of Most Vices, But Not Of Cowardice. Whenever We Have Almost Succeeded In Doing So, God Permits A War Or An Earthquake Or Some Other Calamity, And At Once Courage Becomes So Obviously Lovely And Important Even In Human Eyes That All Our Work Is Undone, And There Is Still At Least One Vice Of Which They Feel Genuine Shame. The Danger Of Inducing Cowardice In Our Patients, Therefore, Is Lest We Produce Real Self-knowledge And Self-loathing, With Consequent Repentance And Humility.

Being Nice Doesn’t Make You Stupid. It Makes You Feel Good Because You Know You Are Gracious Enough To Forgive And Smart Enough To Realize How Distasteful Some People Can Be.

The Natural Life In Each Of Us Is Something Self-centred, Something That Wants To Be Petted And Admired, To Take Advantage Of Other Lives, To Exploit The Whole Universe.

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.

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

The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

When The Author Walks Onto The Stage, The Play Is Over

A Great Many People (not You) Do Now Seem To Think That The Mere State Of Being Worried Is In Itself Meritorious. I Don’t Think It Is. We Must, If It So Happens, Give Our Lives For Others: But Even While We’re Doing It, I Think We’re Meant To Enjoy Our Lord And, In Him, Our Friends, Our Food, Our Sleep, Our Jokes, And The Birds’ Song And The Frosty Sunrise.

Anyone Who Is Honestly Trying To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened: One Of The Reasons Why It Needs No Special Education To Be A Christian Is That Christianity Is An Education Itself. That Is Why An Uneducated Believer Like Bunyan Was Able To Write A Book That Has Astonished The Whole World.

The Hills And Valleys Of Heaven Will Be To Those You Now Experience Not As A Copy Is To An Original, Nor As The Substitute Is To The Genuine Article, But As The Flower To The Root, Or The Diamond To The Coal.

Most Of Us, I Suppose, Have A Secret Country But For Most Of Us It Is Only An Imaginary Country. Edmund And Lucy Were Luckier Than Other People In That Respect.

The Proper Motto Is Not Be Good, Sweet Maid, And Let Who Can Be Clever, But Be Good Sweet Maid, And Don't Forget That This Involves Being As Clever As You Can. God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Any Other Slackers.

I Was Wondering — I Mean — Could There Be Some Mistake? Because Nobody Called Me And Scrubb, You Know. It Was We Who Asked To Come Here. You Would Not Have Called Me Unless I Had Been Calling You.

And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels; That He Called Me Beloved.

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

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

It Is Good That The Window Should Be Transparent, Because The Street Or Garden Beyond It Is Opaque. How If You Saw Through The Garden Too? It Is No Use Trying To 'see Through' [everything]. If You See Through Everything, Then Everything Is Transparent. But A Wholly Transparent World Is An Invisible World. To 'see Through' All Things Is The Same As Not To See.

You Can Give The Devil Too Much Or Too Little Attention.

Everyone Who Believes In God At All Believes That He Knows What You And I Are Going To Do Tomorrow.

Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?

Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Had Yet Been Done.

The Cross Comes Before The Crown And Tomorrow Is A Monday Morning!

Beloved," Said The Glorious One, "unless Thy Desire Had Been For Me Thou Wouldst Not Have Sought So Long And So Truly. For All Find What They Truly Seek.

All That Are In Hell, Choose It. Without That Self-choice There Could Be No Hell.

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe Is A Price Worth Paying For Free Will--that Is, For Making A Live World In Which Creatures Can Do Real Good Or Harm And Something Of Real Importance Of Real Importance Can Happen, Instead Of A Toy World Which Only Moves When He Pulls The Strings--then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

Strictly Speaking, There Are No Such Things As Good And Bad Impulses. Think...of A Piano. It Has Not Got Two Kinds Of Notes On It, The 'right' Notes And The 'wrong' Ones. Every Single Note Is Right At One Time And Wrong At Another. The Moral Law Is Not Any One Instinct Or Set Of Instincts: It Is Something Which Makes A Kind Of Tune (the Tune We Call Goodness Or Right Conduct) By Directing The Instincts.

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.

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

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.

A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.

Meanwhile, Little People Like You And Me, If Our Prayers Are Sometimes Granted, Beyond All Hope And Probability, Had Better Not Draw Hasty Conclusions To Our Own Advantage. If We Were Stronger, We Might Be Less Tenderly Treated. If We Were Braver, We Might Be Sent, With Far Less Help, To Defend Far More Desperate Posts In The Great Battle.

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

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

Surely You Know That If A Man Can't Be Cured Of Churchgoing, The Next Best Thing Is To Send Him All Over The Neighbourhood Looking For The Church That "suits" Him Until He Becomes A Taster Or Connoisseur Of Churches.

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

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.

For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.

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.

Looking For God-or Heaven-by Exploring Space Is Like Reading Or Seeing All Shakespeare's Plays In The Hope That You Will Find Shakespeare As One Of The Characters.

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

If We Are Any Good We Must Always Be Working Towards The Moment At Which Our Pupils Are Fit To Become Our Critics & Rivals

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

Once A Man Is United To God, How Could He Not Live Forever?

It Seems To Me That We Often, Almost Sulkily, Reject The Good That God Offers Us Because, At That Moment, We Expected Some Other Good.

Pity Was Meant To Be A Spur That Drives Joy To Help Misery. But It Can Be Used The Wrong Way Round. It Can Be Used For A Kind Of Blackmailing. Those Who Choose Misery Can Hold Joy Up To Ransom, By Pity.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

He Told People That Their Sins Were Forgiven, And Never Waited To Consult All The Other People Whom Their Sins Had Undoubtedly Injured. He Unhesitatingly Behaved As If He Was The Party Chiefly Concerned, The Person Chiefly Offended In All Offenses. This Makes Sense Only If He Really Was God Whose Laws Are Broken And Whose Love Is Wounded In Every Sin.

Certainly, Lu. Whatever You Like,' Said Peter Unexpectedly. This Was Encouraging, But As Peter Instantly Rolled Round And Went To Sleep Again It Wasn't Much Use.

Why Should Your Majesty Think It? My Own Plans Are Made. While I May, I Sail East In Dawn Treader. When She Fails Me, I Row East In My Coracle. When That Sinks, Shall I Paddle East With My Four Paws. Then, When I Can Swim No Longer, If I Have Not Yet Reached Aslan's Country, There Shall I Sink With My Nose To The Sunrise... And Peepiceek Will Be Head Of Talking Mice In Narnia

For Narnia And For Aslan!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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.

Life Is Too Deep For Words, So Don't Try To Describe It, Just Live It.

Self Improvement

The Laws Of Thought Are Also The Laws Of Things: Of Things In The Remotest Space And The Remotest Time.

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.

Morality Is A Mountain Which We Cannot Climb By Our Own Efforts; And If We Could We Should Only Perish In The Ice And Unbreathable Air Of The Summit, Lacking Those Wings With Which The Rest Of The Journey Has To Be Accomplished. For It Is From There That The Real Ascent Begins. The Ropes And Axes Are 'done Away' And The Rest Is A Matter Of Flying.

Surely Arrested Development Consists Not In Refusing To Lose Old Things But In Failing To Add New Things.

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.

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.

Where, Except In Uncreated Light, Can The Darkness Be Drowned?

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.

Odd, The Way The Less The Bible Is Read The More It Is Translated

The Story Does What No Theorem Can Quite Do. It May Not Be "like Real Life" In The Superficial Sense: But It Sets Before Us An Image Of What Reality May Well Be Like At Some More Central Region.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

We Have On The One Hand A Desperate Need; Hunger, Sickness, And The Dread Of War. We Have, On The Other, The Conception Of Something That Might Meet It: Omnicompetent Global Technocracy. Are Not These The Ideal Opportunity For Enslavement? This Is How It Has Entered Before; A Desperate Need (real Or Apparent) In The One Party, A Power (real Or Apparent) To Relieve It, In The Other.

Where Men Are Forbidden To Honour A King, They Honor Millionaires, Athletes, Or Film Stars Instead; Even Famous Prostitutes Or Gangsters. For Spiritual Nature, Like Bodily Nature, Will Be Served; Deny It Food And It Will Gobble Poison.

When The Police Arrived And Found No Lion, No Broken Wall, And No Convicts, And The Head Behaving Like A Lunatic, There Was An Inquiry Into The Whole Thing. And In The Inquiry All Sorts Of Things About Experiment House Came Out, And About Ten People Got Expelled. After That, The Head's Friends Saw That The Head Was No Use As A Head, So They Got Her Made An Inspector To Interfere With Other Heads. And When They Found She Wasn't Much Good Even At That, They Got Her Into Parliament Where She Lived Happily Ever After.

Human Culture Has Always Had To Exist Under The Shadow Of Something Infinitely More Important Than Itself. If Men Had Postponed The Search For Knowledge And Beauty Until They Were Secure, The Search Would Never Have Begun.

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

Most Of Us Are Not Really Approaching The Subject In Order To Find Out What Christianity Says; We Are Approaching It In The Hope Of Finding Support From Christianity For The Views Of Our Own Party.

The Distinction Between Pretending You Are Better Than You Are And Beginning To Be Better In Reality Is Finer Than Moral Sleuth Hounds Conceive.

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

If You Love Deeply, You're Going To Get Hurt Badly. But It's Still Worth It.

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

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

If We Did Not Bring To The Examinations Of Our Instincts A Knowledge Of Their Comparative Dignity We Could Never Learn It From Them.

Freedom Always Comes With A Price.

I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer.

Nothing In Man Is Either Worse Or Better For Being Shared With The Beasts.

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

Learning Experience

The Christians Say That God Has Done Miracles. The Modern World, Even When It Believes In God, And Even When It Has See The Defenselessness Of Nature, Does Not. It Thinks God Would Not Do That Sort Of Thing.

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

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.

The Problem Of Reconciling Human Suffering With The Existence Of A God Who Loves, Is Only Insoluble So Long As We Attach A Trivial Meaning To The Word "love."

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest.

When You Give Up A Bit Of Work Don't (unless It Is Hopelessly Bad) Throw It Away. Put It In A Drawer. It May Come In Useful Later. Much Of My Best Work, Or What I Think My Best, Is The Re-writing Of Things Begun And Abandoned Years Earlier.

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

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