Background Image

...

Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Don't Say It Was

C. S. Lewis

...

Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.

Views: 6

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

If Ever They Remembered Their Life In This World It Was As One Remembers A Dream.

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.

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.

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

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

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.

It Is So Fatally Easy To Confuse An Aesthetic Appreciation Of The Spiritual Life With The Life Itself-to Dream That You Have Waked, Washed, And Dressed And Then To Find Yourself Still In Bed.

God Is, If I May Say It, Very Unscrupulous

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.

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.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is. If There Are Rats In A Cellar, You Are Most Likely To See Them If You Go In Very Suddenly. But The Suddenness Does Not Create The Rats; It Only Prevents Them From Hiding. In The Same Way The Suddenness Of The Provocation Does Not Make Me Ill Tempered; It Only Shows Me What An Ill-tempered Man I Am.

Inspirational Life

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

The Basic Proposal Of The New Education Is To Be That Dunces And Idlers Must Not Be Made To Feel Inferior To Intelligent And Industrious Pupils. That Would Be 'undemocratic.

Thirty Was So Strange For Me. I've Really Had To Come To Terms With The Fact That I Am Now A Walking And Talking Adult.

We Are Half-hearted Creatures, Fooling About With Drink And Sex And Ambition When Infinite Joy Is Offered Us.

Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even Agony Into A Glory

Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses.

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.

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

We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.

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

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe A Price Worth Paying For Free Will...then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

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.

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.

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.

"welcome, Prince," Said Aslan. "do You Feel Yourself Sufficient To Take Up The Kingship Of Narnia?" "i - I Don't Think I Do, Sir," Said Caspian. "i'm Only A Kid." "good," Said Aslan. "if You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not."

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 Return From The Walk, And The Arrival Of Tea, Should Be Exactly Coincident, And Not Later Than A Quarter Past Four.

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

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

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.

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.

Do Not Look Sad. We Shall Meet Soon Again." "please, Aslan", Said Lucy,"what Do You Call Soon?" "i Call All Times Soon" Said Aslan; And Instantly He Was Vanished Away.

Child,' Said The Lion, 'i Am Telling You Your Story, Not Hers. No One Is Told Any Story But Their Own.

Excess Of Love, Did Ye Say? There Was No Excess, There Was Defect. She Loved Her Son Too Little, Not Too Much. If She Had Loved Him More There'd Be No Difficulty.

The Truth Is, Of Course, That What One Regards As Interruptions Are Precisely One's Life.

Man Was Appointed By God To Have Dominion Over The Beasts, And Everything A Man Does To An Animal Is Either A Lawful Exercise Or A Sacrilegious Abuse Of An Authority By Divine Right.

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

Friends Are Like Coals In A Fire - Together, They Glow; Apart, They Grow Cold.

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

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.

Those Who Cannot Conceive Of Friendship As A Substantive Love But Only As A Disguise Or Elaboration Of Eros Betray The Fact That They Have Never Had A Friend.

It Is Funny How Mortals Always Picture Us As Putting Things Into Their Minds: In Reality Our Best Work Is Done By Keeping Things Out.

Slowly, Quietly, Like Snow-flakes—like The Small Flakes That Come When It Is Going To Snow All Night —little Flakes Of Me, My Impressions, My Selections, Are Settling Down On The Image Of Her. The Real Shape Wil Be Quite Hidden In The End.

...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.

The Great Thing With Unhappy Times Is To Take Them Bit By Bit, Hour By Hour, Like An Illness. It Is Seldom The Present, The Exact Present, That Is Unbearable.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

I Dread Specialists In Power Because They Are Specialists Speaking Outside Of Their Special Subject.

The Enemy Wants To Bring The Man To A State Of Mind In Which He Could Design The Best Cathedral In The World, And Know It To Be The Best, And Rejoice In The Fact, Without Being Any More (or Less) Or Otherwise Glad At Having Done It Than He Would Be If It Had Been Done By Another. The Enemy Wants Him, In The End, To Be So Free From Any Bias In His Own Favour That He Can Rejoice In His Own Talents As Frankly And Gratefully As In His Neighbour's Talents--or In A Sunrise, An Elephant, Or A Waterfall.

We Know Nothing Of Religion Here: We Only Think Of Christ.

The Great Thing To Remember Is That Though Our Feelings Come And Go God's Love For Us Does Not.

Christian Inspirational

All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

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

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

At The Very Least, They Can Be Persuaded That The Bodily Position Makes No Difference To Their Prayers; For They Constantly Forget[...]that They Are Animals And That Whatever Their Bodies Do Affects Their Souls.

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

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

No Good Work Is Done Anywhere Without Aid From The Father Of Lights.

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

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

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

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."

For They (art And Music) Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

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

If Conversion To Christianity Makes No Improvement In A Man's Outward Actions – If He Continues To Be Just A Snobbish Or Spiteful Or Envious Or Ambitious As He Was Before – Then I Think We Must Suspect That His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

Kindness Consents Very Readily To The Removal Of Its Object – We Have All Met People Whose Kindness To Animals Is Constantly Leading Them To Kill Animals Lest They Should Suffer. Kindness, Merely As Such, Cares Not Whether Its Object Becomes Good Or Bad, Provided Only That It Escapes Suffering.

Humour Is...the All-consoling And...the All-excusing, Grace Of Life.

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.

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 My Experience, It Is Affection That Creates This Taste, Teaching Us First To Notice, Then To Endure, Then To Smile At, Then To Enjoy, And Finally To Appreciate The People Who 'happen To Be There.' Made For Us? Thank God, No. They Are Themselves, Odder Than You Could Have Believed And Worth Far More Than We Guessed.

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.

The Sight Of The Huge World Put Mad Ideas Into Me, As If I Could Wander Away, Wander Forever, See Strange And Beautiful Things, One After The Other...

And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?

Have Fun, Even If It’s Not The Same Kind Of Fun Everyone Else Is Having.

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.

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

Fools!" Said The Man, Stamping His Foot With Rage. "that Is The Sort Of Talk That Brought Me Here, And I'd Better Have Been Drowned Or Never Born. Do You Hear What I Say? This Is Where Dreams — Dreams, Do You Understand — Come To Life, Come Real. Not Daydreams: Dreams.

An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him. If You Injure Someone You Dislike, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him More. If You Do Him A Good Turn, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him Less.

Finding Yourself

The Standard That Measures Two Things Is Something Different From Either. You Are, In Fact, Comparing Them Both With Some Real Morality, Admitting That There Is Such A Thing As A Real Right, Independent Of What People Think, And That Some People's Ideas Get Nearer To That Real Right Than Others.

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road. A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Til You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On. Evil Can Be Undone, But It Cannot 'develop' Into Good. Time Does Not Heal It. The Spell Must Be Unwound, Bit By Bit, 'with Backward Mutters Of Dissevering Power' --or Else Not.

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

Would It Not Be Better To Be Dead Than To Have This Horrible Fear That Aslan Has Come And Is Not Like The Aslan We Have Believed In And Longed For? It Is As If The Sun Rose One Day And Were A Black Sun.

It Is After You Have Realized That There Is A Real Moral Law, And A Power Behind The Law, And That You Have Broken That Law And Put Yourself Wrong With That Power -- It Is After All This, And Not A Moment Sooner, That Christianity Begins To Talk.

I Believe That There Are Too Many Practitioners In The Church, Who Are Not Believers.

I Am Perfectly Convinced That Whatever The Gospels Are They Are Not Legends. I Have Read A Great Deal Of Legend And I Am Quite Clear They Are Not That Sort Of Thing....christ Bent Down And Scribbled In The Dust With His Finger. Nothing Comes Of This. No One Has Based Any Doctrine On It. And The Act Of Inventing Little Irrelevant Details To Make An Imaginary Scene More Convincing Is Purely A Modern Art.

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.

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

All The Time The Joke Is That The Word "mine" In Its Fully Possessive Sense Cannot Be Uttered By A Human Being About Anything. In The Long Run Either [satan] Or God Will Say "mine" Of Each Thing That Exists, And Specially Of Each Man.

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.

It's Not A Question Of God 'sending' Us To Hell. In Each Of Us There Is Something Growing Up Which Will Of Itself Be Hell Unless It Is Nipped In The Bud.

Five Senses; An Incurably Abstract Intellect; A Haphazardly Selective Memory; A Set Of Preconceptions And Assumptions So Numerous That I Can Never Examine More Than A Minority Of Them - Never Become Even Conscious Of Them All.

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

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 Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

On The Back Of Satan's Neck Is A Nail Scarred Footprint.

Since It Is So Likely That (children) Will Meet Cruel Enemies, Let Them At Least Have Heard Of Brave Knights And Heroic Courage. Otherwise You Are Making Their Destiny Not Brighter But Darker.

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.

That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Part Of Eternal Reality.

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.

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

A Glimpse Is Not A Vision. But To A Man On A Mountain Road By Night, A Glimpse Of The Next Three Feet Of Road May Matter More Than A Vision Of The Horizon.

The Choice Of Every Lost Soul Can Be Expressed In The Words "better To Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven." There Is Always Something They Insist On Keeping, Even At The Price Of Misery.

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

The More Lucidly We Think, The More We Are Cut Off: The More Deeply We Enter Into Reality, The Less We Can Think.

A Man's Physical Hunger Does Not Prove That Man Will Get Any Bread; He May Die Of Starvation On A Raft In The Atlantic. But Surely A Man's Hunger Does Prove That He Comes Of A Race Which Repairs Its Body By Eating And Inhabits A World Where Eatable Substances Exist. In The Same Way, Though I Do Not Believe (i Wish I Did) That My Desire For Paradise Proves That I Shall Enjoy It, I Think It A Pretty Good Indication That Such A Thing Exists And That Some Men Will.

In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.

But Why,... If You Have A Serious Comment To Make On The Real Life Of Men, Must You Do It By Talking About A Phantasmagoric Never-never Land Of Your Own? Because, I Take It, One Of The Main Things The Author Wants To Say Is That The Real Life Of Men Is Of That Mythical And Heroic Quality.

Precisely Because We Cannot Predict The Moment, We Must Be Ready At All Moments.

The Long, Dull, Monotonous Years Of Middle-aged Prosperity Or Middle-aged Adversity Are Excellent Campaigning Weather For The Devil.

The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectations And Memory.

Sleeping On A Dragon's Hoard With Greedy, Dragonish Thoughts In His Heart, He Had Become A Dragon Himself.

Tea Should Be Taken In Solitude.

Once In Our World, A Stable Had Something In It That Was Bigger Than Our Whole World.

And Since We Cannot Deceive The Whole Human Race All The Time, It Is Most Important Thus To Cut Every Generation Off From All Others; For Where Learning Makes A Free Commerce Between The Ages There Is Always The Danger That The Characteristic Errors Of One May Be Corrected By The Characteristic Truths Of Another.

As For All I Can Tell, The Only Difference Is That What Many See We Call A Real Thing, And What Only One Sees We Call A Dream.

Man's Conquest Of Nature, If The Dreams Of Some Scientific Planners Are Realized, Means The Rule Of A Few Hundreds Of Men Over Billions Upon Billions Of Men. There Neither Is Nor Can Be Any Simple Increase Of Power On Man's Side. Each New Power Won By Man Is A Power Over Man As Well.

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

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.

Readers Are Advised To Remember That The Devil Is A Liar.

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!

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.

The Pain I Feel Now Is The Happiness I Had Before. That's The Deal.

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

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

Aslan Is A Lion- The Lion, The Great Lion." "ooh" Said Susan. "i'd Thought He Was A Man. Is He-quite Safe? I Shall Feel Rather Nervous About Meeting A Lion"..."safe?" Said Mr Beaver ..."who Said Anything About Safe? 'course He Isn't Safe. But He's Good. He's The King, I Tell You.

You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not While You Are Sleeping. You Can See Mistakes In Arithmetic When Your Mind Is Working Properly; While You Are Making Them You Cannot See Them. Good People Know About Both Bad And Evil; Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

Which Of The Religions Of The World Gives To Its Followers The Greatest Happiness? While It Lasts, The Religion Of Worshiping Oneself Is Best.

This Is The Land Of Narnia,' Said The Faun, 'where We Are Now; All That Lies Between The Lamp-post And The Great Castle Of Cair Paravel On The Eastern Sea.

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

It Is A Dreadful Truth That The State Of Having To Depend Solely On God Is What We All Dread Most.... It Is Good Of Him To Force Us; But Dear Me, How Hard To Feel That It Is Good At The Time.

We May Give Our Human Loves The Unconditional Allegiance Which We Owe Only To God. They They Become Gods: Then They Become Demons. Then They Will Destroy Us, And Also Destroy Themselves. For Natural Loves That Are Allowed To Become Gods Do Not Remain Loves. They Are Still Called So, But Can Become In Fact Complicated Forms Of Hatred.

Only He Who Really Lived A Human Life (and I Presume That Only One Did) Can Fully Taste The Horror Of Death.

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Everyone Else To Give It Up.

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

Post-christian Man Is Not The Same As Pre-christian Man. He Is As Far Removed As Virgin Is From Widow: There Is Nothing In Common Except Want Of A Spouse: But There Is A Great Difference Between A Spouse-to-be And A Spouse Lost.

All Men Alike Stand Condemned, Not By Alien Codes Of Ethics, But By Their Own, And All Men Therefore Are Conscious Of Guilt.

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

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

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

Will The Others See You Too?" Asked Lucy. "certainly Not At First," Said Aslan. "later On, It Depends." "but They Won’t Believe Me!" Said Lucy. "it Doesn’t Matter.

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.

Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It.

And In That Far Distant Day When The Gods Become Wholly Beautiful, Or We At Last Are Shown How Beautiful They Always Were, This Will Happen More And More. For Mortals, As You Said, Will Become More And More Jealous. And Mother And Wife And Child And Friend Will All Be In League To Keep A Soul From Being United With The Divine Nature.

Periods' Are Largely An Invention Of The Historians. The Poets Themselves Are Not Conscious Of Living In Any Period And Refuse To Conform To The Scheme.

A Man Who Is Eating Or Lying With His Wife Or Preparing To Go To Sleep In Humility, Thankfulness And Temperance, Is, By Christian Standards, In An Infinitely Higher State Than One Who Is Listening To Bach Or Reading Plato In A State Of Pride.

I Expect You Have Seen Someone Put A A Lighted Match To A Bit Of Newspaper Which Is Propped Up In A Grate Against An Unlit Fire. And For A Second Nothing Seems To Have Happened; And Then You Notice A Tiny Steak Of Flame Creeping Along The Edged Of The Newspaper. It Was Like That Now.

When A Man Is Getting Better He Understands More And More Clearly The Evil That Is Still Left In Him. When A Man Is Getting Worse He Understands His Own Badness Less And Less.

Will You Come With Me To The Mountains? It Will Hurt At First, Until Your Feet Are Hardened. Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?

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.

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.

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

When All The Suns And Nebulae Have Passed Away, Each One Of You Will Still Be Alive.

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

After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Toward Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again. For However Important Chastity (or Courage, Or Truthfulness, Or Any Other Virtue) May Be, This Process Trains Us In Habits Of The Soul Which Are More Important Still. It Cures Our Illusions About Ourselves And Teaches Us To Depend On God. We Learn, On The One Hand, That We Cannot Trust Ourselves Even In Our Best Moments, And, On The Other, That We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven.

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.

It Matters Enormously If I Alienate Anyone From The Truth.

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

There Is A Difference Between A Private Devotional Life And A Corporate One. Solemnity Is Proper In Church, But Things That Are Proper In Church Are Not Necessarily Proper Outside, And Vice Versa.

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

To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.

It Is A Serious Thing To Live In A Society Of Possible Gods And Goddesses. To Remember That The Dullest, And Most Uninteresting Person You Can Talk To May One Day Be A Creature Which, If You Saw It Now, You Would Be Strongly Tempted To Worship.

In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.

A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.

Inner Silence Is For Our Race A Difficult Achievement. There Is A Chattering Part Of The Mind Which Continues, Until It Is Corrected, To Chatter On Even In The Holiest Places.

This Act [creation], As It Is For God, Must Always Remain Totally Inconceivable To Man. For We--even Our Poets And Musicians And Inventors--never, In The Ultimate Sense Make. We Only Build. We Always Have Materials To Build From. All We Can Know About The Act Of Creation Must Be Derived From What We Can Gather About The Relation Of The Creatures To Their Creator

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

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

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.

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

The Greatest Evil Is Not Done In Those Sordid Dens Of Evil That Dickens Loved To Paint ... But Is Conceived And Ordered (moved, Seconded, Carried, And Minuted) In Clear, Carpeted, Warmed, Well-lighted Offices, By Quiet Men With White Collars And Cut Fingernails And Smooth-shaven Cheeks Who Do Not Need To Raise Their Voices.

If I Had Really Cared As I Thought I Did About The Sorrows Of The World I Should Not Have Been So Overwhelmed When My Own Sorrow Came- I Thought I Trusted The Rope Until It Mattered To Me Whether It Would Bear Me, Now It Matters And I Find I Didn't.

The Holier A Man Becomes, The More He Mourns Over The Unholiness Which Remains In Him.

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

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

I Have Discovered, Passionate Grief Does Not Link Us With The Dead But Cuts Us Off From Them. This Becomes Clearer And Clearer. It Is Just At Those Moments When I Feel Least Sorrow - Getting Into My Morning Bath Is Usually One Of Them - That H. Rushes Upon My Mind In Her Full Reality, Her Otherness. Not, As In My Worst Moments, All Foreshortened And Patheticized And Solemnized By My Miseries, But As She Is In Her Own Right. This Is Good And Tonic.

Pure, Spiritual, Intellectual Love Shot Form Their Faces Like Barbedlightning. It Was So Unlike The Love We Experience That Its Expressioncould Easily Be Mistaken For Ferocity.

As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.

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

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.

We Must Sometimes Get Away From The Authorized Version, If For No Other Reason, Simply Because It Is So Beautiful And So Solemn. Beauty Exalts, But Beauty Also Lulls. Early Associations Endear, But They Also Confuse. Through That Beautiful Solemnity, The Transporting Or Horrifying Realities Of Which The Book Tells May Come To Us Blunted And Disarmed, And We May Only Sigh With Tranquil Veneration When We Ought To Be Burning With Shame, Or Struck Dumb With Terror, Or Carried Out Of Ourselves By Ravishing Hopes And Adorations.

We Do Know That No Person Can Be Saved Except Through Christ. We Do Not Know That Only Those Who Know Him Can Be Saved By Him.

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.

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

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

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

At All Ages, If [fantasy And Myth] Is Used Well By The Author And Meets The Right Reader, It Has The Same Power: To Generalize While Remaining Concrete, To Present In Palpable Form Not Concepts Or Even Experiences But Whole Classes Of Experience, And To Throw Off Irrelevancies. Bat At Its Best It Can Do More; It Can Give Us Experiences We Have Never Had And Thus, Instead Of 'commenting On Life,' Can Add To It.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

The Christian View Is That Men Were Created To Be In A Certain Relationship To God (if We Are In That Relation To Him, The Right Relation To One Another Will Follow Inevitably).

... Believing In A God Whom We Cannot But Regard As Evil, And Then, In Mere Terrified Flattery Calling Him 'good' And Worshipping Him Is A Still Greater Danger... The Ultimate Question Is Whether The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Or That Of The Inerrancy Of Scripture Is To Prevail When They Conflict. I Think The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Is The More Certain Of The Two. Indeed, Only That Doctrine Renders This Worship Of Him Obligatory Or Even Permissable.

To Fight In Another Man's Armour Is Something More Than To Be Influenced By His Style Of Fighting.

Human Beings Judge One Another By Their External Actions. God Judges Them By Their Moral Choices.

There Is No Good Trying To Be More Spiritual Than God. God Never Meant Man To Purely Spiritual Creature. That Is Why He Uses Material Things Like Bread And Wine To Put The New Life Into Us. We May Think This Rather Crude And Unspiritual. God Does Not: He Invented Eating. He Likes Matter. He Invented It.

I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.

The Question Is Not What We Intended Ourselves To Be, But What He Intended Us To Be When He Made Us.

Trending Author

Federico Garcia Lorca

Michael E. Mann

H. Rider Haggard

Category