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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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Fools!" Said The Man,

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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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.

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

To Get Even Near Humility, Even For A Moment, Is Like A Drink Of Cold Water To A Man In A Desert.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

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

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

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.

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

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.

God Is Not An Optional Extra, He's An Absolute Must!

The Humblest Praise Most, While Cranks & Malcontents Praise Least. Praise Almost Seems To Be Inner Health Made Audible

If The Universe Is So Bad...how On Earth Did Human Beings Ever Come To Attribute It To The Activity Of A Wise And Good Creator?

Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.

Into The Void Of Silence, Into The Empty Space Of Nothing, The Joy Of Life Is Unfurled.

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

If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing, Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

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

Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.

Philanthropy Giving

The More Pride We Have, The More Other People’s Pride Irritates Us

Something Deep In The Human Heart Breaks At The Thought Of A Life Of Mediocrity.

Do Not Dare Not To Dare.

Nothing Is Yet In Its True Form.

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

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege, Of Individuality.

Our Prayers For Others Flow More Easily Than Those For Ourselves. This Shows We Are Made To Live By Charity.

A Work Of (whatever) Art Can Be Either 'received' Or 'used'. ...'using' Is Inferior To 'reception' Because Art, If Used Rather Than Received, Merely Facilitates, Brightens, Relieves Or Palliates Our Life, And Does Not Add To It ... When The Art In Question Is Literature A Complication Arises, For To 'receive' Significant Words Is Always, In One Sense, To 'use' Them, To Go Through And Beyond Them To An Imagined Something Which Is Not Itself Verbal.

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.

God Is Not Merely Good, But Goodness; Goodness Is Not Merely Divine, But God.

Love Is Something More Stern And Splendid Than Mere Kindness.

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You....hand Over The Whole Natural Self, All The Desires Which You Think Innocent As Well As The Ones You Think Wicked- The Whole Outfit. I Will Give You A New Self Instead. In Fact, I Will Give You Myself: My Own Will Shall Become Yours.

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

Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself. He Himself Is The Fuel Our Spirits Were Designed To Burn, Or The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On. There Is No Other.

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.

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

Children Have One Kind Of Silliness, As You Know, And Grown-ups Have Another Kind.

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

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

Well,' Said Ransom, 'if It Is A Delusion, It's A Pretty Stubborn One.

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.

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

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

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

Edmund, Who Was Becoming A Nastier Person Every Minute, Thought That He Had Scored A Great Success, And Went On At Once To Say, 'there She Goes Again. What's The Matter With Her?

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

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

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

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

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.

Holiness Is Irresistible. If Even 10% Of The World's Population Had It The Whole World Would Be Converted And Happy Before The Year's End.

I Wish We Didn't Live In A World Where Buying And Selling Things Seems To Have Become Almost More Important Than Either Producing Or Using Them.

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.

When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.

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

You Are Guilty Of No Evil, Ransom Of Thulcandra, Except A Little Fearfulness. For That, The Journey You Go On Is Your Pain, And Perhaps Your Cure: For You Must Be Either Mad Or Brave Before It Is Ended.

The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles, But To Irrigate Deserts.

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

Do Not Cite The Deep Magic To Me, Witch. I Was There When It Was Written.

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

It Is Hard To Have Patience With People Who Say 'there Is No Death' Or 'death Doesn't Matter.' There Is Death. And Whatever Is Matters. And Whatever Happens Has Consequences, And It And They Are Irrevocable And Irreversible. You Might As Well Say That Birth Doesn't Matter.

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

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

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

If Only This Toothache Would Go Away, I Could Write Another Chapter On The Problem Of Pain.

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

Do You Not Know How Bashful Friendship Is? Friends - Comrades - Do Not Look At Each Other. Friendship Would Be Ashamed.

I Wish I Were Younger. What Inclines Me Now To Think You May Be Right In Regarding [evolution] As The Central And Radical Lie In The Whole Web Of Falsehood That Now Governs Our Lives Is Not So Much Your Arguments Against It As The Fanatical And Twisted Attitudes Of Its Defenders.

But I Remember More Dearly Autumn Afternoons In Bottoms That Lay Intensely Silent Under Old Great Trees

Freedom Always Comes With A Price.

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.

I Could Well Believe That It Is God's Intention, Since We Have Refused Milder Remedies, To Compel [christians] Into Unity, By Persecution Even. Satan Is Without Doubt Nothing Else Than A Hammer In The Hand Of A Benevolent And Severe God.

If Education Is Beaten By Training, Civilization Dies.

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

Thus, And Not Otherwise, The World Was Made. Either Something Or Nothing Must Depend On Individual Choices.

Individual Choice

No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.

At The End Of All Things, The Blessed Will Say, 'we Never Lived Anywhere But In Heaven.'

The Fact That Our Heart Yearns For Something Earth Can't Supply Is Proof That Heaven Must Be Our Home.

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

If There Ever Was A Time That Nothing Existed, Then Nothing Would Exist Now

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.

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.

Part Of Every Misery Is, So To Speak, The Misery's Shadow Or Reflection: The Fact That You Don't Merely Suffer But Have To Keep On Thinking About The Fact That You Suffer. I Not Only Live Each Endless Day In Grief, But Live Each Day Thinking About Living Each Day In Grief.

Don't You Understand Anything? Isn't It Absolutely Essential To Keep A Fierce Left And A Fierce Right, Both On Their Toes And Each Terrified Of The Other? That's How We Get Things Done. Any Opposition To The N.i.c.e. Is Represented As A Left Racket In The Right Papers And A Right Racket In The Left Papers. If It's Properly Done, You Get Each Side Outbidding The Other In Support Of Us-to Refute The Enemy Slanders. Of Course We're Non-political. The Real Power Always Is.

No One Returns From Christianity To The Same State He Was Before Christianity But Into A Worse State: The Difference Between A Pagan And An Apostate Is The Difference Between An Unmarried Woman And An Adulteress. For Faith Perfects Nature But Faith Lost Corrupts Nature. Therefore Many Men Of Our Time Have Lost Not Only The Supernatural Light But Also The Natural Light Which Pagans Possessed.

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

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home. (quoting Alexander Maclaren, The Wearied Christ And Other Sermons)

Nothing Is More Characteristically Juvenile Than Contempt For Juvenility. . . Youth's Characteristic Chronological Snobbery.

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

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing That God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy...whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want. Once More, We Are Embarrassed By The Intolerable Compliment, By Too Much Love, Not Too Little.

The Glory Of God, And, As Our Only Means Of Glorifying Him, The Salvation Of Human Souls, Is The Real Business Of Life.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

But Now I Discovered The Wonderful Power Of Wine. I Understood Why Men Become Drunkards. For The Way It Worked On Me Was Not At All That It Blotted Out These Sorrows, But That It Made Them Seem Glorious And Noble, Like Sad Music, And I Somehow Great And Revered For Feeling Them.

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.

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?

I'm On Aslan's Side Even If There Isn't Any Aslan To Lead It. I'm Going To Live As Like A Narnian As I Can Even If There Isn't Any Narnia.

In The Long Run The Answer To All Those Who Object To The Doctrine Of Hell, Is Itself A Question: What Are You Asking God To Do? To Wipe Out Their Past Sins And, At All Costs, To Give Them A Fresh Start, Smoothing Every Difficulty And Offering Every Miraculous Help? But He Has Done So, On Calvary. To Forgive Them? They Will Not Be Forgiven. To Leave Them Alone? Alas, I Am Afraid That Is What He Does.

What Draws People To Be Friends Is That They See The Same Truth. They Share It.

A Sign Of A Culture That Has Lost Its Faith - Moral Collapse Follows Upon Spiritual Collapse.

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

A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.

Your People Eat Dry And Tasteless Flesh But It Is Off Plates As Smooth As Ivory And As Round As The Sun.

[m]an Has Been Accustomed, Ever Since He Was A Boy, To Having A Dozen Incompatible Philosophies Dancing About Together Inside His Head. He Doesn't Think Of Doctrines As Primarily "true" Or "false," But As "academic" Or "practical," "outworn" Or "contemporary," "conventional" Or "ruthless." Jargon, Not Argument, Is Your Best Ally In Keeping Him From The Church. Don't Waste Time Trying To Make Him Think That Materialism Is True! Make Him Think It Is Strong Or Stark Or Courageous—that It Is The Philosophy Of The Future. That's The Sort Of Thing He Cares About.

Almost Certainly God Is Not In Time. His Life Does Not Consist Of Moments One Following Another...ten-thirty-- And Every Other Moment From The Beginning Of The World--is Always Present For Him. If You Like To Put It This Way, He Has All Eternity In Which To Listen To The Split Second Of Prayer Put Up By A Pilot As His Plane Crashes In Flames.

When You Invite A Middle-aged Moralist To Address You, I Suppose I Must Conclude That You Have A Taste For Middle-aged Moralizing.

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 World Is So Much Larger Than I Thought. I Thought We Went Along Paths--but It Seems There Are No Paths. The Going Itself Is The Path.

Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal.

Write About What Really Interests You, Whether It Is Real Things Or Imaginary Things, And Nothing Else.

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

Lion Witch Wardrobe

The Essence Of Religion, In My View, Is The Thirst For An End Higher Than Natural Ends.

You Know Me Better Than You Think, You Know, And You Shall Know Me Better Yet.

You Think You Know

Nothing Less Will Shake A Man — Or At Any Rate A Man Like Me — Out Of His Merely Verbal Thinking And His Merely Notional Beliefs. He Has To Be Knocked Silly Before He Comes To His Senses. Only Torture Will Bring Out The Truth. Only Under Torture Does He Discover It Himself.

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

I Think God Wants Us To Love Him More, Not To Love Others Less.

We Were Made To Be Neither Cerebral Men Nor Visceral Men, But Men. Not Beasts Nor Angels But Men - Things At Once Rational And Animal.

The Very First Tear He Made Was So Deep That I Thought It Had Gone Right Into My Heart.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike...unless We Return To The Crude And Nursery-like Belief In Objective Values, We Perish.

If You Haven't Met Satan Recently, You Are Probably Going His Way!

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

If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.

Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.

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.

For His Mind Was Full Of Forlorn Hopes, Death-or-glory Charges, And Last Stands.

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.

Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

The Sweet Heavy Smell Grew Very Much Less. For Though The Whole Fire Had Not Been Put Out, A Good Bit Of It Had, And What Remained Smelled Very Largely Of Burnt Marsh-wiggle, Which Is Not At All An Enchanting Smell.

The Value Of The Individual Does Not Lie In Him. He Receives It By Union With Christ.

Wouldn't He Know Without Being Asked?' Said Polly. 'i've No Doubt He Would,' Said The Horse (still With His Mouth Full). 'but I've A Sort Of An Idea He Likes To Be Asked.

What The Soul Cries Out For Is The Resurrection Of The Senses. Even In This Life, Matter Would Be Nothing To Us If It Were Not The Source Of Sensations.

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?

This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

Put First Things First And We Get Second Things Thrown In: Put Second Things First & We Lose Both First And Second Things.

Put First Things First

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.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. 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. Wrap It Carefully Round With Hobbies And Little Luxuries; Avoid All Entanglements. Lock It Up Safe In The Casket Or Coffin Of Your Selfishness. But In That Casket, Safe, Dark, Motionless, Airless, It Will Change. It Will Not Be Broken; It Will Become Unbreakable, Impenetrable, Irredeemable. To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

Until The Theologians And The Ordained Clergy Begin To Communicate With Ordinary People In The Vernacular, In A Way That They Can Understand, I’m Going To Have To Do This Sort Of Thing.

Grief ... Gives Life A Permanently Provisional Feeling. It Doesn't Seem Worth Starting Anything. I Can't Settle Down. I Yawn, I Fidget, I Smoke Too Much. Up Till This I Always Had Too Little Time. Now There Is Nothing But Time. Almost Pure Time, Empty Successiveness.

Think Of A Country Where People Were Admired For Running Away In Battle, Or Where A Man Felt Proud Of Double-crossing All The People Who Had Been Kindest To Him. You Might Just As Well Try To Imagine A Country Where Two And Two Made Five.

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

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

Miracles Are For Beginners.

There Is Something Which Unites Magic And Applied Science (technology) While Separating Them From The "wisdom" Of Earlier Ages. For The Wise Men Of Old, The Cardinal Problem Of Human Life Was How To Conform The Soul To Objective Reality, And The Solution Was Wisdom, Self-discipline , And Virtue. For The Modern, The Cardinal Problem Is How To Conform Reality To The Wishes Of Man, And The Solution Is A Technique.

Virtue - Even Attempted Virtue - Brings Light; Indulgence Brings Fog.

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

Always Prefer The Plain Direct Word To The Long, Vague One.

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.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues. There Is No Getting Away From It; The Old Christian Rule Is, "either Marriage, With Completely Faithfulness To Your Partner, Or Else Total Abstinence."

The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen Of Narnia.

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

Those Who Are Enjoying Something, Or Suffering Something, Together, Are Companions. Those Who Enjoy Or Suffer One Another, Are Not.

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.

I Came Alive When I Started Loving You.

Never Use Abstract Nouns When Concrete Ones Will Do. If You Mean “more People Died” Don’t Say “mortality Rose.

When He [god] Talks Of Their Losing Their Selves, He Means Only Abandoning The Clamour Of Self-will; Once They Have Done That, He Really Gives Them Back All Their Personality, And Boasts (i Am Afraid, Sincerely) That When They Are Wholly His They Will Be More Themselves Than Ever.

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

I Have Come," Said A Deep Voice Behind Them. They Turned And Saw The Lion Himself, So Bright And Real And Strong That Everything Else Began At Once To Look Pale And Shadowy Compared With Him.

Above All, Do Not Attempt To Use Science (i Mean, The Real Sciences) As A Defence Against Christianity. They Will Positively Encourage Him To Think About Realities He Can’t Touch And See.

A Tyrannous And Gluttonous Demand For Affection Can Be A Horrible Thing. But In Ordinary Life No One Calls A Child Selfish Because It Turns For Comfort To Its Mother; Nor An Adult Who Turns To His Fellow "for Company." Those, Whether Children Or Adults, Who Do So Least Are Not Usually The Most Selfless.

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

You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

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

The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

In Justifying Cruelty To Animals We Put Ourselves Also On The Animal Level. We Choose The Jungle And Must Abide By Our Choice.

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

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

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.

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

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

...the Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal, Or Two Friends Talking Over A Pint Of Beer, Or A Man Alone Reading A Book That Interests Him..." - C.s. Lewis: Weight Of Glory

What Do They Teach Them At These Schools?

Whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him. His Increasing Reputation, His Widening Circle Of Acquaintances, His Sense Of Importance, The Growing Pressure Of Absorbing And Agreeable Work Build Up In Him A Sense Of Being Really At Home On Earth Which Is Just What We Want.

The Action Of Pity Leaps Quicker Than Light From The Highest Place To The Lowest To Bring Healing And Joy, Whatever The Cost To Itself. It Changes Darkness Into Light And Evil Into Good. But It Will Not, At The Cunning Tears Of Hell, Impose On Good The Tyranny Of Evil. Every Disease That Submits To A Cure Shall Be Cured: But We Will Not Call Blue Yellow To Please Those Who Insist On Having Jaundice, Nor Make A Midden Of The World's Garden For The Sake Of Some Who Cannot Abide The Smell Of Roses.

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

Provided That Any Of Those Neighbours Sing Out Of Tune Or Have Boots That Squeak, Or Double Chins, Or Odd Clothes, The Patient Will Quite Easily Believe That Their Religion Must Therefore Be Somehow Ridiculous.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.

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.

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.

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

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

Christian Inspirational

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.

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, I Can, I Think, Tell Him The First Step. The First Step Is To Realize That One Is Proud. And A Biggish Step, Too. At Least, Nothing Whatever Can Be Done Before It. If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means That You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

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.

It Would Seem That Our Lord Finds Our Desires Not Too Strong, But Too Weak.

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

Love, While Always Forgiving Of Imperfections And Mistakes, Can Never Cease To Will Their Removal.

Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.

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.

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

Most People Spend Most Of Their Lives Doing Neither What They Want To Be Doing Nor What They Ought To Be Doing.

I Have Swallowed Up Girls And Boys, Women And Men, Kings And Emperors, Cities And Realms," Said The Lion. It Didn't Say This As If It Were Boasting, Nor As If It Were Sorry, Nor As If It Were Angry. It Just Said It.

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

In Silence And In Meditation On The Eternal Truths, I Hear The Voice Of God Which Excites Our Hearts To Greater Love.

There Is No Doctrine Which I Would More Willingly Remove From Christianity Than The Doctrine Of Hell, If It Lay In My Power. But It Has The Support Of Scripture And, Especially, Of Our Lord's Own Words; It Has Always Been Held By The Christian Church, And It Has The Support Of Reason.

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

A Man Can't Be Taken To Hell, Or Sent To Hell: You Can Only Get There On Your Own Steam.

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

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