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

-C. S. Lewis

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For Christianity Is A

C. S. Lewis

Topic

Fighting

Animal

Men

More From C. S. Lewis

It Is A Poor Thing To Strike Our Colors To God When The Ship Is Going Down Under Us; A Poor Thing To Come To Him As A Last Resort, To Offer Up 'our Own' When It Is No Longer Worth Keeping. If God Were Proud He Would Hardly Have Us On Such Terms: But He Is Not Proud, He Stoops To Conquer, He Will Have Us Even Though We Have Shown That We Prefer Everything Else To Him.

Color

Lasts

Ships

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.

Truth

Live Life

Thinking

Good, As It Ripens, Becomes Continually More Different Not Only From Evil But From Other Good.

Evil

Different

Great Divorce

True Friends... Face In The Same Direction, Toward Common Projects, Interests, Goals.

True Friend

Goal

Gazing

Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

Hurt

Pain

Boys

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.

Kindness

Records

Definitions

Term, Holidays, Term, Holidays, Till We Leave School, And Then Work, Work, Work Till We Die.

School

Holiday

Term

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

Screwtape Letters

Pretending

Turns

I Sometimes Wonder Whether All Pleasures Are Not Substitutes For Joy.

Inspirational

Joy

Sometimes

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

Giants

Use

Mets

But Who Can Feel Ugly, When Their Heart Feels Joy

Heart

Joy

Ugly

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

Heart

Should

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.

Heart

Cutting

Tasks

We May Not Be Able To Get Certainty, But We Can Get Probability, And Half A Loaf Is Better Than No Bread.

Food

Science

Half

Now Repentance Is No Fun At All. It Is Something Much Harder Than Merely Eating Humble Pie. It Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self-will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into For Thousands Of Years. It Means Undergoing A Kind Of Death. In Fact, It Needs A Good Man To Repent. And Here's The Catch. Only A Bad Person Needs To Repent: Only A Good Person Can Repent Perfectly. The Worse You Are The More You Need It And The Less You Can Do It. The Only Person Who Could Do It Perfectly Would Be A Perfect Person - And He Would Not Need It.

Fun

Mean

Humble

The Notion That Everyone Would Like Christianity To Be True, And Therefore All Atheists Are Brave Men Who Have Accepted The Defeat Of All Their Deepest Desires, Is Simply Impudent Nonsense.

Atheist

Men

Brave

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

Religious

Thinking

Mouths

He Didn't Call His Father And Mother 'father' And 'mother' But Harold And Alberta. They Were Very Up To Date And Advanced People. They Were Vegetarians, Non-smokers And Teetotalers, And Wore A Special Kind Of Underclothes. In Their House There Was Very Little Furniture And Very Few Clothes On The Beds And The Windows Were Always Open.

Mother

Father

Clothes

While We Are Actually Subjected To Them, The 'moods' And 'spirits' Of Nature Point No Morals. Overwhelming Gaiety, Insupportable Grandeur, Sombre Desolation Are Flung At You. Make What You Can Of Them, If You Must Make At All. The Only Imperative That Nature Utters Is, 'look. Listen. Attend.

Nature

Looks

Spirit

Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills.

Ink

Cures

Humans

Affection Would Not Be Affection If It Was Loudly And Frequently Expressed; To Produce It In Public Is Like Getting Your Household Furniture Out For A Move. It Did Very Well In Its Place, But It Looks Shabby Or Tawdry Or Grotesque In The Sunshine.

Moving

Sunshine

Looks

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

Prayer

Helping Others

Giving

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.

Art

Poetry

Literature

I Would Say If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity. But To Speak Of The Craft Itself, 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. Writing Is Like A 'lust,' Or Like 'scratching When You Itch.' Writing Comes As A Result Of A Very Strong Impulse, And When It Does Come, I For One Must Get It Out.

Strong

Believe

Writing

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

Book

Extravagance

Bills

It's So Large" "it's The World Dear, Did You Think It'd Be Small?" "smaller

Thinking

World

Dear

A Voice Had Begun To Sing. It Was Very Far Away And Digory Found It Hard To Decide From What Direction It Was Coming. Sometimes It Seemed To Come From All Directions At Once. Sometimes He Almost Thought It Was Coming Out Of The Earth Beneath Them. Its Lower Notes Were Deep Enough To Be The Voice Of The Earth Herself. There Were No Words. It Was Hardly A Tune. But It Was Beyond Comparison, The Most Beautiful Sound He Had Ever Heard.

Beautiful

Voice

Nephew

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

Christian

World

I Have Received No Assurance That Anything We Can Do Will Eradicate Suffering. I Think The Best Results Are Obtained By People Who Work Quietly Away At Limited Objectives, Such As The Abolition Of The Slave Trade, Or Prison Reform, Or Factory Acts, Or Tuberculosis, Not By Those Who Think They Can Achieve Universal Justice, Or Health, Or Peace. I Think The Art Of Life Consists In Tackling Each Immediate Evil As Well As We Can.

Art

Thinking

People

All Possible Knowledge, Then, Depends On The Validity Of Reasoning...unless Human Reasoning Is Valid No Science Can Be True.

Miracle

Being True

Humans

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.

Evil

Doe

Good Times

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

Mad

Helping

Great Divorce

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

Kind

Remember

Longing

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

Unattainable

Consciousness

Invisible

Hell Is A State Of Mind -- Ye Never Said A Truer Word. And Every State Of Mind, Left To Itself, Every Shutting Up Of The Creature Within The Dungeon Of Its Own Mind -- Is, In The End, Hell. But Heaven Is Not A State Of Mind. Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly.

Real

Heaven

Mind

This Is My Password," Said The King As He Drew His Sword. "the Light Is Dawning, The Lie Broken. Now Guard Thee, Miscreant, For I Am Tirian Of Narnia.

Kings

Lying

Light

Once You Become Aware That The Main Business That You Are Here For Is To Know God, Most Of Life's Problems Fall Into Place Of Their Own Accord. J.i. Packer Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Will Get Neither.

Fall

Heaven

Earth

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

Mean

Perfect

Debate

Even In Literature And Art, No Man Who Bothers About Originality Will Ever Be Original: Whereas If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth (without Caring Twopence How Often It Has Been Told Before) You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Become Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

Art

Truth

Creativity

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

Pain

Writing

Interesting

I Think That If God Forgives Us We Must Forgive Ourselves. Otherwise, It Is Almost Like Setting Up Ourselves As A Higher Tribunal Than Him.

Inspirational

Forgiveness

Thinking

For Pride Is Spiritual Cancer: It Eats Up The Very Possibility Of Love, Or Contentment, Or Even Common Sense.

Spiritual

Cancer

Pride

Freedom Always Comes With A Price.

But The Great Thing To Remember Is That, Though Our Feelings Come And Go, His Love For Us Does Not. It Is Not Wearied By Our Sins, Or Our Indifference; And, Therefore, It Is Quite Relentless In Its Determination That We Shall Be Cured Of Those Sins, At Whatever Cost To Us, At Whatever Cost To Him.

Determination

Feelings

Doe

Emeth Came Walking Forward Into The Open Strip Of Grass Between The Bonfire And The Stable. His Eyes Were Shining, His Face Was Solemn, His Hand Was On His Sword-hilt, And He Carried His Head High. Jill Felt Like Crying When She Looked At His Face. And Jewel Whispered In The King's Ear, "by The Lion's Mane, I Almost Love This Young Warrior, Calormene Though He Be. He Is Worthy Of A Better God Than Tash.

Kings

Eye

Warrior

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

Heart

Voice

Silence

My Own Eyes Are Not Enough For Me...i Will See Through The Eyes Of Others. Reality, Even Seen Through The Eyes Of Many Is Not Enough...i Will See What Others Have Invented. Even The Eyes Of All Humanity Are Not Enough. I Regret That The Brutes Cannot Write Books. Very Gladly Would I Learn What Face Things Present To A Mouse Or A Bee. More Gladly Still Would I Perceive The Olfactory World Charged With All The Information And Emotion It Carries For A Dog.

Dog

Nature

Regret

The Human Mind Is Generally Far More Eager To Praise And Dispraise Than To Describe And Define. It Wants To Make Every Distinction A Distinction Of Value; Hence Those Fatal Critics Who Can Never Point Out The Differing Quality Of Two Poets Without Putting Them In An Order Of Preference As If They Were Candidates For A Prize.

Order

Two

Mind

We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.

Real

Miracle

Christianity

But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.

Children

Paws

We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.

Eye

Punishment

Lazarus

[something] Does Not Rise To The Dignity Of Error.

Errors

Doe

Dignity

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.

Angel

Animal

Men

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side.

Atheist

Lying

Waiting

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You ‘love’ Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did. As Soon As We Do This We Find One Of The Great Secrets. When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him.

Love

Religious

Secret

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.

Wise

Teaching

Historical

Giving To The Poor Is An Essential Part Of Christian Morality.

Christian

Giving

Essentials

Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.

Men

Thinking

Democracy

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.

Childhood

Adults

Approval

If A Thing Is Free To Be Good It Is Also Free To Be Bad. And Free Will Is What Has Made Evil Possible. Why, Then, Did God Give Them Free Will? Because Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Is Also The Only Thing That Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

Evil

Giving

Joy

Love, In The Christian Sense, Does Not Mean An Emotion. It Is A State Not Of The Feelings But Of The Will; That State Of The Will Which We Have Naturally About Ourselves, And Must Learn To Have About Other People.

Christian

Mean

People

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

True Love

Love Is

Lust

You Find Out The Strength Of A Wind By Trying To Walk Against It, Not By Lying Down.

Lying

Wind

Trying

But As For Lucy, She Was Always Gay And Golden-haired, And All Princes In Those Parts Desired Her To Be Their Queen, And Her Own People Called Her Queen Lucy The Valiant.

Queens

Gay

People

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

Military

War

Thinking

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

Temptation

Hardest

Needed

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

Writing

Stories

Moral

The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One - The Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts.

Thought Provoking

Religion

Literature

Nothing, Not Even The Best And Noblest, Can Go On As It Now Is. Nothing, Not Even What Is Lowest And Most Bestial, Will Not Be Raised Again If It Submits To Death. It Is Sown A Natural Body, It Is Raised A Spiritual Body. Flesh And Blood Cannot Come To The Mountains [heaven]. Not Because They Are Too Rank, But Because They Are Too Weak. What Is A Lizard Compared With A Stallion? Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

Spiritual

Blood

Heaven

The Man Can Neither Man, Nor Retain, One Moment Of Time; It All Comes To Him By Pure Gift; He Might As Well Regard The Sun And Moon As His Chattels.

Moon

Men

Might

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

World

May

Tricks

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

Nonsense

Remains

No One Can Say 'he Jests At Scars Who Never Felt A Wound' For I Have Never For One Moment Been In A State Of Mind To Which Even The Imagination Of Serious Pain Was Less Than Intolerable. If Any Man Is Safe From The Danger Of Under-estimating This Adversary, I Am That Man.

Pain

Men

Imagination

I Was At This Time Living, Like So Many Atheists Or Antitheists, In A Whirl Of Contradictions. I Maintained That God Did Not Exist. I Was Also Very Angry With God For Not Existing. I Was Equally Angry With Him For Creating A World.

Atheist

Creating

Religion

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons

Autumn

Seasons

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not.

Christianity

Easier

Courses

It's So Much Easier To Pray For A Bore Than To Go And See One.

Inspirational

Prayer

Literature

You Can Do More With A Castle In A Story Than With The Best Cardboard Castle That Ever Stood On A Nursery Table.

Nurse

Castles

Stories

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe That The Sun Has Risen: Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

Faith

God

Christian

Christianity Is Not A Patent Medicine. Christianity Claims To Give An Account Of Facts - To Tell You What The Real Universe Is Like. Its Account Of The Universe May Be True, Or It May Not, And Once The Question Is Really Before You, Then Your Natural Inquisitiveness Must Make You Want To Know The Answer. 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.

Real

Believe

Men

All The Delights Of Sense, Or Heart, Or Intellect, With Which You Could Once Have Tempted Him, Even The Delights Of Virtue Itself, Now Seem To Him In Comparison But As The Half Nauseous Attractions Of A Raddled Harlot Would Seem To A Man Who Hears That His True Beloved Whom He Has Loved All His Life And Whom He Had Believed To Be Dead Is Alive And Even Now At His Door.

Heart

Men

Doors

I Cannot Speak For The Way God Deals With Others; I Only Know How He Deals With Me Personally.

Way

Speak

Deals

The Sin Both Of Men And Of Angels, Was Rendered Possible By The Fact That God Gave Us Free Will.

Angel

Men

Facts

And He Writhed Inside At What Seemed The Cruelty And Unfairness Of The Demand. He Had Not Yet Learned That If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

Demand

Deeds

Rewards

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

Would Be

Looks

Ashamed

And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

Love

Drama

Doe

Bridge-players Tell Me That There Must Be Some Money On The Game 'or Else People Won't Take It Seriously'. Apparently It's Like That. Your Bid - For God Or No God, For A Good God Or The Cosmic Sadist, For Eternal Life Or Nonentity - Will Not Be Serious If Nothing Much Is Staked On It. And You Will Never Discover How Serious It Was Until The Stakes Are Raised Horribly High, Until You Find That You Are Playing Not For Counters Or For Sixpences But For Every Penny You Have In The World.

Life

Player

Games

For In Calormen, Story-telling (whether The Stories Are True Or Made Up) Is A Thing You're Taught, Just As English Boys And Girls Are Taught Essay-writing. The Difference Is That People Want To Hear The Stories, Whereas I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Wanted To Read The Essays.

Girl

Writing

Boys

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

Wisdom

Examination

Dignity

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

Inspirational

Walks

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

Sweet

Long

Noble

Oh, I Can See It Happening, Age After Age, And Growing Worse The More You Reveal Your Beauty: The Son Turning His Back On The Mother And The Bride On Her Groom, Stolen Away By This Everlasting Calling, Calling, Calling Of The Gods. Taken Where We Can't Follow. It Would Be Far Better For Us If You Were Foul And Ravening. We'd Rather You Drank Their Blood Than Stole Their Hearts. We'd Rather They Were Ours And Dead Than Yours And Made Immortal.

Mother

Taken

Heart

Before God Closed In On Me, I Was Offered What Now Appears A Moment Of Wholly Free Choice. But I Feel My Decision Was Not So Important. I Was The Object Rather Than The Subject In This Affair.

Decision

Choices

Important

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

Thinking

Talking

Water

And Above All, You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Panelling…the Question Should Never Be: ‘do I Like That Kind Of Service?’ But ‘are These Doctrines True: Is Holiness There? Does My Conscience Move Me Towards This? Is My Reluctance To Move To This Door Due To My Pride, Or My Mere Taste, Or My Personal Dislike For This Particular Door-keeper?

Moving

Pride

Doors

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything. But No, That Is Not Quite Accurate. There Is One Place Where Her Absence Comes Locally Home To Me, And It Is A Place I Can't Avoid. I Mean My Own Body. It Had Such A Different Importance While It Was The Body Of H.'s Lover. Now It's Like An Empty House.

Home

Mean

Sky

All Is Summed Up In The Prayer Which A Young Female Human Is Said To Have Uttered Recently: "o God, Make Me A Normal Twentieth-century Girl!" Thanks To Our Labors, This Will Mean Increasingly: "make Me A Minx, A Moron, And A Parasite.

Girl

Prayer

Mean

You Must See That If Two Things Are Alike, Then It Is A Further Question Whether The First Is Copied From The Second, Or The Second From The First, Or Both From A Third.

Two

Firsts

Thirds

I Read In A Periodical The Other Day That The Fundamental Thing Is How We Think Of God. By God Himself, It Is Not! How God Thinks Of Us Is Not Only More Important, But Infinitely More Important.

Thinking

Important

Fundamentals

The Mold In Which A Key Is Made Would Be A Strange Thing, If You Had Never Seen A Key: And The Key Itself A Strange Thing If You Had Never Seen A Lock. Your Soul Has A Curious Shape Because It Is A Hollow Made To Fit A Particular Swelling In The Infinite Contours Of The Divine Substance, Or A Key To Unlock One Of The Doors In The House With Many Mansions. Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It -- Made For It Stitch By Stitch As A Glove Is Made For A Hand.

Keys

Doors

Hands

Good Beats Upon The Damned Incessantly As Sound Waves Beat On The Ears Of The Deaf, But They Cannot Receive It. Their Fists Are Clenched, Their Teeth Are Clenched, Their Eyes Fast Shut. First They Will Not, In The End They Cannot, Open Their Hands For Gifts, Or Their Mouth For Food, Or Their Eyes To See.

Eye

Hands

Sound

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.

Book

Quality

Inquiring

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.

Real

Angel

Men

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.

Country

Thinking

Mirrors

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".

Dog

Sheep

Wish

I Write For The Unlearned About Things In Which I Am Unlearned Myself.

Writing

Hope Is One Of The Theological Virtues. This Means That A Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not (as Some Modern People Think) A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do. It Does Not Mean That We Are To Leave The Present World As It Is. If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Just Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

Christian

Mean

Thinking

For Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted.

Prayer

Essence

May

You Do Not Fail In Obedience Through Lack Of Love, But You Have Lost Love Because You Never Attempted Obedience.

Lost Love

Love Is

Lack Of Love

There Is No Neutral Ground In The Universe. Every Square Inch, Every Split Second Is Claimed By God, And Counterclaimed By Satan.

Squares

Religion

Atheism

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

Kindness

Giving

Feelings

I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road.

Thinking

Rescue

Great Divorce

Once In Those Very Early Days My Brother Brought Into The Nursery The Lid Of A Biscuit Tin Which He Had Covered With Moss And Garnished With Twigs And Flowers So As To Make It A Toy Garden Or A Toy Forest. That Was The First Beauty I Ever Knew. What The Real Garden Had Failed To Do, The Toy Garden Did. It Made Me Aware Of Nature-not, Indeed, As A Storehouse Of Forms And Colors But As Something Cool, Dewy, Fresh, Exuberant....as Long As I Live My Imagination Of Paradise Will Retain Something Of My Brother's Toy Garden.

Happiness

Brother

Real

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

Where You Are

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

Christian

Wisdom

Thinking

Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.

Optimistic

Thinking

Views

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

Beautiful

Children

Believe

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.

Son

Excess

Littles

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

Broken

Necks

Madness

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.

Gnats

People

Ordinary

Here, I Think, Lies Our Real Dilemma. Probably We Cannot, Certainly We Shall Not, Retrace Our Steps. We Are Tamed Animals (some With Kind, Some With Cruel, Masters) And Should Probably Starve If We Got Out Of Our Cage. That Is One Horn Of The Dilemma. But In An Increasingly Planned Society, How Much Of What I Value Can Survive? That Is The Other Horn.

Real

Lying

Animal

Spiteful Words Can Hurt Your Feelings But Silence Breaks Your Heart.

Hurt

Heart

Silence

If You Have A Religion It Must Be Cosmic.

Omnipotence

Cosmic

Ifs

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

Book

Writing

Kind

We Want, In Fact, Not So Much A Father In Heaven As A Grandfather In Heaven: A Senile Benevolence Who, As They Say, "liked To See Young People Enjoying Themselves" And Whose Plan For The Universe Was Simply That It Might Be Truly Said At The End Of Each Day, "a Good Time Was Had By All."

Attitude

Father

People

Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake.

Men

Doe

Sake

And I Say Also This. I Do Not Think The Forest Would Be So Bright, Nor The Water So Warm, Nor Love So Sweet, If There Were No Danger In The Lakes.

Sweet

Thinking

Lakes

A Perfect Practice Of Christianity Would, Of Course, Consist In A Perfect Imitation Of The Life Of Christ -- I Mean, In So Far As It Was Applicable In One's Own Particular Circumstance. Not In An Idiotic Sense -- It Doesn't Mean That Every Christian Should Grow A Beard, Or Be A Bachelor, Or Become A Travelling Preacher. It Means That Every Single Act And Feeling, Every Experience, Whether Pleasant Or Unpleasant, Must Be Referred To God.

Christian

Mean

Practice

We May Ignore, But We Can Nowhere Evade The Presence Of God. The World Is Crowded With Him. He Walks Everywhere Incognito.

Inspirational

God

Religion

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.

Beautiful

Bible

Book

The Most Intense Joy, Lies Not In The Having, But In The Desire, Delight That Never Fades, Bliss That Is Eternal, Is Only Your, When What You Most Desire, Is Just Out Of Reach...anthony Hopkins, From The Movie Shadowlands, Where He Plays C.s. Lewis

Lying

Play

Joy

Joy Bursts In Our Lives When We Go About Doing The Good At Hand And Not Trying To Manipulate Things And Times To Achieve Joy.

Hands

Joy

Trying

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

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

Art

Men

Helping

I Can Imagine No Man Who Will Look With More Horror On The End Than A Conscientious Revolutionary Who Has, In A Sense Sincerely, Been Justifying Cruelties And Injustices Inflicted On Millions Of His Contemporaries By The Benefits Which He Hopes To Confer On Future Generations: Generations Who, As One Terrible Moment Now Reveals To Him, Were Never Going To Exist. Then He Will See The Massacres, The Faked Trials, The Deportations, To Be All Ineffaceably Real, An Essential Part, His Part, In The Drama That Has Just Ended: While The Future Utopia Had Never Been Anything But A Fantasy.

Real

Drama

Men

One Is Given Strength To Bear What Happens To One, But Not The 100 And 1 Different Things That Might Happen.

Different

Might

Bears

And There We All Were, As Invisible As You Could Wish To See.

Wish

Invisible

Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted. And If An Infinitely Wise Being Listens To The Requests Of Finite And Foolish Creatures, Of Course He Will Sometimes Grant And Sometimes Refuse Them.

Wise

Prayer

Essence

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.

Spiritual

Intellectual

Faces

You Cannot Go On 'explaining Away' For Ever: You Will Find That You Have Explained Explanation Itself Away. You Cannot Go On 'seeing Through' Things For Ever. The Whole Point Of Seeing Through Something Is To See Something Through It.

Wisdom

Philosophy

Goes On

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.

True Friend

Eye

Goal

You Can Begin As If Nothing Had Ever Gone Wrong. White As Snow.

White

Snow

Gone

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

Love

Knowledge

Mad

The Psalmists In Telling Everyone To Praise God Are Doing What All Men Do When They Speak Of What They Care About.

Men

Care

Speak

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness.

Kindness

Definitions

God Is Love

Either Jesus Is The Son Of God ; Or A Madman Or Worse. But His Being Just A Great Teacher? He's Not Left That Open To Us.

Teacher

Jesus

Son

Kids Like Us Don't Often Have The Chance Of Meeting A Great Warrior Like You. Would You Have A Little Fencing Match With Me? It Would Be Frightfully Decent.

Kids

Warrior

Would Be

"i Wish I Had Never Been Born," She Said. "what Are We Born For?" "for Infinite Happiness," Said The Spirit. "you Can Step Out Into It At Any Moment..."

Wish

Steps

Spirit

Don't You Mind," Said Puddleglum. "there Are No Accidents. Our Guide Is Aslan; And He Was There When The Giant King Caused The Letters To Be Cut, And He Knew Already All Things That Would Come Of Them; Including This.

Kings

Cutting

Mind

Have You Not Seen That In Our Days Of Any Whose Story, Song Or Art Delights Us, Our Sincerest Praise Means, When All's Said, 'you Break My Heart?

Song

Art

Mean

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

Beautiful

Life Is

Beauty Of Life

God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself.

Running

Men

Car

I Suggest To You That It Is Because God Loves Us That He Gives Us The Gift Of Suffering. Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World. You See, We Are Like Blocks Of Stone Out Of Which The Sculptor Carves The Forms Of Men. The Blows Of His Chisel, Which Hurt Us So Much Are What Make Us Perfect.

Hurt

Pain

Block

I Have Been Suspected Of Being What Is Called A Fundamentalist. That Is Because I Never Regard Any Narrative As Unhistorical Simply On The Ground That It Includes The Miraculous.

Narrative

Miraculous

Has Beens

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.

Running

Country

Men

What Assurance Have We That Our Masters Will Or Can Keep The Promise Which Induced Us To Sell Ourselves? Let Us Not Be Deceived By Phrases About 'man Taking Charge Of His Own Destiny'. All That Can Really Happen Is That Some Men Will Take Charge Of The Destiny Of The Others. They Will Be Simply Men; None Perfect; Some Greedy, Cruel And Dishonest. The More Completely We Are Planned The More Powerful They Will Be. Have We Discovered Some New Reason Why, This Time, Power Should Not Corrupt As It Has Done Before?

Powerful

Destiny

Men

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

Life

Christian

Men

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.

Mother

Children

Selfish

The New Testament Does Not Envisage Solitary Religion; Regular Assembly For Worship Is Everywhere In The Epistles.

Doe

Worship

Assembly

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.

Men

Heaven

Soul

Friendship Is The Greatest Of Worldly Goods. Certainly To Me It Is The Chief Happiness Of Life.

Life Happiness

Chiefs

Goods

Perhaps The Experience Had Been So Complete That Repetition Would Be Vulgarity - Like Asking To Hear The Same Symphony Twice In A Day.

Symphony

Would Be

Asking

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.

Bible

Biblical

Self

When The Voice Of Your Friend Or The Page Of Your Book Sinks Into Democratic Equality With The Pattern Of The Wallpaper, The Feel Of Your Clothes, Your Memory Of Last Night, And The Noises From The Road, You Are Falling Asleep. The Highly Selective Consciousness Enjoyed By Fully Alert Men, With All Its Builded Sentiments And Consecrated Ideals, Has As Much To Be Called Real As The Drowsy Chaos, And More.

Dream

Memories

Real

I Have Often Repented Of Speech But Hardly Ever Of Silence.

Silence

Speech

This Is Where Men, Even The Trustiest, Fail Us. Their Heart Is Never So Wholly Given To Any Matter But That Some Trifle Of A Meal, Or A Drink, Or A Sleep, Or A Joke, Or A Girl, May Come In Between Them And It, And Then (even If You Are A Queen) You'll Get No More Good Out Of Them Until They've Had Their Way.

Girl

Queens

Heart

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

Running

Reality

Machines

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.

Morning

Grief

Cutting

Wherever Any Precept Of Traditional Morality Is Simply Challenged To Produce Its Credentials, As Though The Burden Of Proof Lay On It, We Have Taken The Wrong Position.

Taken

Burden Of Proof

Morality

A Woman Means By Unselfishness Chiefly Taking Trouble For Others; A Man Means Not Giving Trouble To Others...thus, While The Woman Thinks Of Doing Good Offices And The Man Of Respecting Other People's Rights, Each Sex, Without Any Obvious Unreason, Can And Does Regard The Other As Radically Selfish.

Sex

Selfish

Mean

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

Inspirational

Change

Inspiring

We Have Not Long To Live In Any Event. Let Us Spend What Is Left In Seeking The Unpeopled World Behind The Sunrise.

Long

Sunrise

Events

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death.

Country

Desire

Alive

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him.

Thinking

Our Love

Subjects

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are The Picture. You Can’t See It, You Can't See Your True Self. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted.

Artist

Self

Remember

You've No Idea How Good An Old Joke Sounds When You Take It Out Again After A Rest Of Five Or Six Hundred Years.

Years

Ideas

Sound

The Best Fruits Are Plucked For Each By Some Hand That Is Not His Own.

Hands

Fruit

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.

Love

Inspirational

Broken Heart

There Is Hope For A Man Who Has Never Read Malory Or Boswell Or Tristam Shandy Or Shakespeare's Sonnets: But What Can You Do With A Man Who Says He "has Read" Them, Meaning He Has Read Them Once, And Thinks That This Settles The Matter?

Men

Thinking

Matter

He Cannot "tempt" To Virtue As We Do To Vice. He Wants Them To Learn To Walk And Must Therefore Take Away His Hand; And If Only The Will To Walk Is Really There He Is Pleased Even With Their Stumbles.

Hands

Vices

Want

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

Forever

Unattainable

Consciousness

‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior

Selfish

Humble

Conceited

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

Inspirational

Country

Religious

Beauty Is Not Democratic; She Reveals Herself More To The Few Than To The Many.

Democratic

Could One Start A Stagnation Party-which At General Elections Would Boast That During Its Term Of Office No Event Of The Least Importance Had Taken Place?

Party

Taken

Office

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

Inspirational

Doors

Lasts

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

Book

Men

Rereading

The Only Way To Drive Out Bad Culture Is To Create Good Culture. We Need To Recognize That Artistic Talent Is A Gift From The Lord - And That Developing Those Talents Is The Only Way To Create Good Culture.

Needs

Culture

Way

Don't Judge A Man By Where He Is, Because You Don't Know How Far He Has Come.

Men

Judging

Know How

For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.

God

Creatures

Seems

The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.

Self

Vices

Feckless

When I Lay These Questions Before God I Get No Answer. But A Rather Special Sort Of 'no Answer.' It Is Not The Locked Door. It Is More Like A Silent, Certainly Not Uncompassionate, Gaze. As Though He Shook His Head Not In Refusal But Waiving The Question. Like, 'peace, Child; You Don't Understand.

Children

Doors

Special

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.

Real

Mean

Player

Our Desire Is Not Only To See Glory, But To Participate In The Glory We See.

Desire

Glory

The Incalculable Winds Of Fantasy And Music And Poetry, The Mere Face Of A Girl, The Song Of A Bird, Or The Sight Of A Horizon, Are Always Blowing Evil’s Whole Structure Away.

Girl

Song

Sight

A Pipe Gives A Wise Man Time To Think And A Fool Something To Stick In His Mouth.

Wise

Time

Men

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

Reality

Unbearable

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.

Giving

Forever

Today

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.

Art

Dust

Details

I Wonder If People Who Asked For God To Intervene In Our World, Really Know What They Are Asking. Will They Want To Be There When God Really Does Intervene?

Our World

People

Doe

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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