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Do You Mean To Say," Asked Caspian, "that You Three Come From A Round World (round Like A Ball) And You've Never Told Me! It's Really Too Bad For You. Because We Have Fairy-tales In Which There Are Round Worlds And I Have Always Loved Them … Have You Ever Been To The Parts Where People Walk About Upside-down?" Edmund Shook His Head. "and It Isn't Like That," He Added. "there's Nothing Particularly Exciting About A Round World When You're There.

-C. S. Lewis

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Do You Mean To

C. S. Lewis

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Do You Mean To Say," Asked Caspian, "that You Three Come From A Round World (round Like A Ball) And You've Never Told Me! It's Really Too Bad For You. Because We Have Fairy-tales In Which There Are Round Worlds And I Have Always Loved Them … Have You Ever Been To The Parts Where People Walk About Upside-down?" Edmund Shook His Head. "and It Isn't Like That," He Added. "there's Nothing Particularly Exciting About A Round World When You're There.

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

In Science We Have Been Reading Only The Notes To A Poem; In Christianity We Find The Poem Itself.

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

Before We Can Be Cured, We Must Want To Be Cured.

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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.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

All Your Life An Unattainable Ecstasy Has Hovered Just Beyond The Grasp Of Your Consciousness.

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.

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

The Real Oxford Is A Close Corporation Of Jolly, Untidy, Lazy, Good-for-nothing Humorous Old Men, Who Have Been Electing Their Own Successors Ever Since The World Began And Who Intend To Go On With It. They'll Squeeze Under The Revolution Or Leap Over It When The Time Comes, Don't You Worry.

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

Screwtape Letters

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not. We Cannot Compete, In Simplicity With People Who Are Inventing Religions. How Could We? We Are Dealing With Fact. Of Course Anyone Can Be Simple If He Has No Facts To Bother About.

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

As Long As This Deliberate Refusal To Understand Things From Above, Even Where Such Understanding Is Possible, Continues, It Is Idle To Talk Of Any Final Victory Over Materialism.

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

Morality Or Duty Never Yet Made A Man Happy In Himself Or Dear To Others.

Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Ever Be Really Yours.

We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains: It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World....no Doubt Pain As God's Megaphone Is A Terrible Instrument; It May Lead To Final And Unrepented Rebellion. But It Gives The Only Opportunity The Bad Man Can Have For Amendment. It Removes The Veil; It Plants The Flag Of Truth Within The Fortress Of The Rebel Soul.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

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You Cannot Study Pleasure In The Moment Of The Nuptial Embrace, Nor Repentance While Repenting, Nor Analyze The Nature Of Humour While Roaring With Laughter.

Provocation Doesn't Make Me Ill-tempered: It Only Shows Me How Ill-tempered I Am.

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And The Whole Forest Would Give Itself Up To Jollification For Weeks On End.

For The Christian, There Are, Strictly Speaking, No Chances. A Secret Master Of The Ceremonies Has Been At Work.

Whenever We Find That Our Religious Life Is Making Us Feel That We Are Good - Above All, That We Are Better Than Someone Else - I Think We May Be Sure That We Are Being Acted On, Not By God, But By The Devil.

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

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When There Came A Sound That I'd Never Heard The Like Of In All My Born Days. Eh, I Won't Forget That. The Whole Air Was Full Of It, Loud As Thunder But Far Longer, Cool And Sweet As Music Over Water But Strong Enough To Shake The Woods. And I Said To Myself, 'if That's Not The Horn, Call Me A Rabbit.

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Unless I Believe In God, I Cannot Believe In Thought: So I Can Never Use Thought To Disbelieve In God.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

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

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Do Not Be Deceived, Wormwood. Our Cause Is Never More In Danger Than When A Human, No Longer Desiring, But Still Intending, To Do Our Enemy's Will, Looks Round Upon A Universe From Which Every Trace Of Him Seems To Have Vanished, And Asks Why He Has Been Forsaken, And Still Obeys.

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

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

Your Patient Has Become Humble; Have You Drawn His Attention To The Fact? All Virtues Are Less Formidable To Us Once The Man Is Aware That He Has Them, But This Is Specially True Of Humility.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

Enemy-occupied Territory - That Is What This World Is.

Very Often The Only Way To Get A Quality In Reality Is To Start Behaving As If You Had It Already.

We Must Learn By Experience To Avoid Either Trains Of Thought Or Social Situations Which For Us (not Necessarily For Everyone) Lead To Temptations. Like Motoring-don't Wait Till The Last Moment Before You Put On The Brakes But Put Them On, Gently And Quietly, While The Danger Is Still A Good Way Off.

Train Of Thought

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

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

The Good Man's Past Begins To Change So That His Forgiven Sins And Remembered Sorrows Take On The Quality Of Heaven.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

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

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

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

My Son, By All Means Desist From Kicking The Venerable And Enlightened Vizier: For As A Costly Jewel Retains Its Value Even If Hidden In A Dung-hill, So Old Age And Discretion Are To Be Respected Even In The Vile Persons Of Our Subjects. Desist Therefore, And Tell Us What You Desire And Propose.

That Will Not Be The Time For Choosing: It Will Be The Time When We Discover Which Side We Really Have Chosen, Whether We Realized It Before Or Not. Now, Today, This Moment, Is Out Chance To Chose The Right Side. God Is Holding Back To Give Us That Chance. It Will Not Last Forever. We Must Take It Or Leave It.

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.

The Birth Of Christ Is The Central Event In The History Of The Earth-- The Very Thing The Whole Story Has Been About.

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.

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

I Wish They Would Remember That The Charge To Peter Was "feed My Sheep", Not "try Experiments On My Rats", Or Even "teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks".

It's Always Winter But It's Never Christmas.

The Discomfiture We Feel May Be Our Most Accurate Human Sensation; Reminding Us We Are Not Quite "at Home" Here.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

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

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

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

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

When Pain Is To Be Born, A Little Courage Helps More Than Much Knowledge, A Little Human Sympathy More Than Much Courage, And The Least Tincture Of The Love Of God More Than All.

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

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Every Object You See Before You At This Moment -the Walls, Ceiling, And Furniture, The Book, Your Own Washed Hands And Cut Fingernails, Bears Witness To The Colonization Of Nature Of Reason.

We Have Had Enough, Once And For All, Of Hedonism--the Gloomy Philosophy Which Says That Pleasure Is The Only Good.

And There, Right In The Middle Of It, I Find 'forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive Those That Sin Against Us.' There Is No Slightest Suggestion That We Are Offered Forgiveness On Any Other Terms. It Is Made Perfectly Clear That If We Do Not Forgive We Shall Not Be Forgiven.

It Still Remains True That No Justification Of Virtue Will Enable A Man To Be Virtuous.

Education Without Values, As Useful As It Is, Seems Rather To Make Man A More Clever Devil.

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

I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.

Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

He's Not Safe, But He's Good (referring To Aslan, The Lion, In The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe)

All Shall Be Done, But It May Be Harder Than You Think.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

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.

Pride, On The Other Hand, Is The Mother Of All Sins, And The Original Sin Of Lucifer.... An Instrument Strung, But Preferring To Play Itself Because It Thinks It Knows The Tune Better Than The Musician

The Christian And The Materialist Hold Different Beliefs About The Universe. They Can't Both Be Right. The One Who Is Wrong Will Act In A Way Which Simply Doesn't Fit The Real Universe. Consequently, With The Best Will In The World, He Will Be Helping His Fellow Creatures To Their Destruction.

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

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

The Typical Expression Of Opening Friendship Would Be Something Like, 'what? You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One!

The Most Valuable Thing The Psalms Do For Me Is To Express The Same Delight In God Which Made David Dance.

Every Christian Would Agree That A Man's Spiritual Health Is Exactly Proportional To His Love For God.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike. Subjectivism About Moral Values Is Eternally Incompatible With Democracy. We And Our Rulers Are Of One Kind Only So Long As We Are Subject To One Law. But If There Is No Law Of Nature, The Ethos Of Any Society Is The Creation Of Its Rulers, Educators And Conditioners; And Every Creator Stands Above And Outside His Own Creation.

We Were Talking Of Dragons, Tolkien And I In A Berkshire Bar. The Big Workman Who Had Sat Silent And Sucked His Pipe All The Evening, From His Empty Mug With Gleaming Eye Glanced Towards Us: "i Seen 'em Myself!" He Said Fiercely.

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?

A Clever Arrangement Of Bad Eggs Will Never Make A Good Omelet.

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.

Oh, I'm A Dangerous Criminal, I Am,' Said The Dwarf Cheerfully.

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

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.

If There's Anyone Who Can Appear Before Aslan Without Their Knees Knocking, They're Either Braver Than Most, Or Else Just Silly.

Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.

Friendship Love

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

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.

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

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

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.

Alas," Said Aslan, Shaking His Head. "it Will. Things Always Work According To Their Nature. She Has Won Her Heart's Desire; She Has Unwearying Strength And Endless Days Like A Goddess. But Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery And Already She Begins To Know It. All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them.... I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

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.

They Stormed And Jeered At One Another In Long Meaningless Words Of About Twenty Syllables Each.

The First Thing To Get Clear About Christian Morality Between Man And Man Is That In This Department Christ Did Not Come To Teach Any Brand New Morality. The Golden Rule Of The New Testament (do As You Would Be Done By) Is A Summing Up Of What Everyone, At Bottom, Had Always Known To Be Right.

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

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