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Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. 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. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.

-C. S. Lewis

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Good And Evil Both

C. S. Lewis

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Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. 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. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.

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

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Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

What Would Really Satisfy Us Would Be A God Who Said Of Anything We Happened To Like Doing, 'what Does It Matter So Long As They Are Contented?'

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.

In Charn [jadis] Had Taken No Notice Of Polly (till The Very End) Because Digory Was The One She Wanted To Make Use Of. Now That She Had Uncle Andrew, She Took No Notice Of Digory. I Expect Most Witches Are Like That. They Are Not Interested In Things Or People Unless They Can Use Them; They Are Terribly Practical.

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

Man's Conquest Of Nature Turns Out, In The Moment Of Its Consummation, To Be Nature's Conquest Of Man.

We Can Never Know That A Piece Of Writing Is Bad Unless We Have Begun By Trying To Read It As If It Was Very Good And Ended By Discovering That We Were Paying The Author An Undeserved Compliment.

The Whole Difficulty Of Understanding Hell Is That The Thing To Be Understood Is So Nearly Nothing.

Everyone Feels Benevolent If Nothing Happens To Be Annoying Him At The Moment.

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

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness.

No Christian And, Indeed, No Historian Could Accept The Epigram Which Defines Religion As 'what A Man Does With His Solitude.'

Pain Is G-d's Megaphone To Wake Up The World.

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.

Now That I Am A Christian I Do Have Moods In Which The Whole Thing Looks Improbable: But When I Was An Atheist I Had Moods In Which Christianity Looked Terribly Probable.

A Christian Society Is Not Going To Arrive Until Most Of Us Really Want It: And We Are Not Going To Want It Until We Become Fully Christian. I May Repeat "do As You Would Be Done By" Till I Am Black In The Fact, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbour As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbour As Myself Till I Learn To Love God.

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

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

A Centaur Has A Man-stomach And A Horse-stomach. And Of Course Both Want Breakfast. So First Of All He Has Porridge And Pavenders And Kidneys And Bacon And Omlette And Cold Ham And Toast And Marmalade And Coffee And Beer. And After That He Tends To The Horse Part Of Himself By Grazing For An Hour Or So And Finishing Up With A Hot Mash, Some Oats, And A Bag Of Sugar. That's Why It's Such A Serious Thing To Ask A Centaur To Stay For The Weeekend. A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

Need-love Says Of A Woman "i Cannot Live Without Her"; Gift-love Longs To Give Her Happiness, Comfort, Protection - If Possible, Wealth; Appreciative Love Gazes And Holds Its Breath And Is Silent, Rejoices That Such A Wonder Should Exist Even If Not For Him, Will Not Be Wholly Dejected By Losing Her, Would Rather Have It So Than Never To Have Seen Her At All.

The Books Or The Music In Which We Thought The Beauty Was Located Will Betray Us If We Trust To Them; It Was Not In Them, It Only Came Through Them,and What Came Through Them Was Longing. These Things—the Beauty, The Memory Of Our Own Past—are Good Images Of What We Really Desire; But If They Are Mistaken For The Thing Itself They Turn Into Dumb Idols,breaking The Hearts Of Their Worshippers. For They 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.

Humans Are Amphibians - Half Spirit And Half Animal. As Spirits They Belong To The Eternal World, But As Animals They Inhabit Time.

If People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit.

It Is Because They Have No Oyarsa,' Said One Of The Pupils. It Is Because Everyone Of Them Wants To Be A Little Oyarsa Himself,' Said Augray.

Every Sin Is The Distortion Of An Energy Breathed Into Us.

We Are...a Divine Work Of Art, Something That God Is Making...something With Which He Will Not Be Satisfied Until It Has A Certain Character.

It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.

But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.

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

Even When I Feared And Detested Christianity, I Was Struck By Its Essential Unity, Which, In Spite Of Its Divisions, It Has Never Lost. I Trembled On Recognizing The Same Unmistakable Aroma Coming From The Writings Of Dante And Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas And William Law.

As Long As He Doesn't Convert It Into Action, It Does Not Matter How Much A Man Thinks About His Repentance.

Our Father Refreshes Us On The Journey With Some Pleasant Inns, But Will Not Encourage Us To Mistake Them For Home.

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare.

Time Is The Very Lens Through Which Ye See - Small And Clear, As Men See Through The Wrong End Of A Telescope - Something That Would Otherwise Be Too Big For Ye To See At All. That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Parts Of Eternal Reality.

Omnipotence Means Power To Do All That Is Intrinsically Possible, Not To Do The Intrinsically Impossible. You May Attribute Miracles To Him, But Not Nonsense.

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.

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

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.

You Can't See Anything Properly While Your Eyes Are Blurred With Tears.

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

As The King Governs By His Executive, So Reason In Man Must Rule The Mere Appetites By Means Of The 'spirited Element.'

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.'

We Only Learn To Behave Ourselves In The Presence Of God.

Presence Of God

Our Struggle Is--isn't It?--to Achieve And Retain Faith On A Lower Level. To Believe That There Is A Listener At All. For As The Situation Grows More And More Desperate, The Grisly Fears Intrude. Are We Only Talking To Ourselves In An Empty Universe? The Silence Is Often So Emphatic. And We Have Prayed So Much Already

Many Thousands Of People Have Had The Experience Of Finding The First Friend, And It Is None The Less A Wonder; As Great A Wonder (pace The Novelists) As First Love, Or Even Greater.

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If You Never Take Risks, You'll Never Accomplish Great Things. Everybody Dies, But Not Everyone Has Lived.

When Golden Moments Come, When God Enables One Really To Pray Without Words, Who But A Fool Would Reject The Gift?

I Enjoyed My Breakfast This Morning, And I Think That Was A Good Thing And Do Not Think It Was Condemned By God. But I Do Not Think Myself A Good Man For Enjoying It.

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. Evil Is A Parasite, Not An Original Thing.

Atheism Turns Out To Be Too Simple. If The Whole Universe Has No Meaning, We Should Never Have Found Out That It Has No Meaning.

What Began The Change Was The Very Writing Itself. Let No One Lightly Set About Such A Work. Memory, Once Waked, Will Play The Tyrant.

By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!

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.

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.

Stop It," Spluttered Eustace, "go Away. Put That Thing Away. It's Not Safe. Stop It, I Say. I'll Tell Caspian. I'll Have You Muzzled And Tied Up." "why Do You Not Draw Your Own Sword, Poltroon!" Cheeped The Mouse. "draw And Fight Or I'll Beat You Black And Blue With The Flat." "i Haven't Got One," Said Eustace. "i'm A Pacifist. I Don't Believe In Fighting." "do I Understand," Said Reepicheep, Withdrawing His Sword For A Moment And Speaking Very Sternly, "that You Do Not Intend To Give Me Satisfaction?

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

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.

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

I Have Learned Now That While Those Who Speak About One's Miseries Usually Hurt, Those Who Keep Silence Hurt More.

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

Theology Is Like A Map. Merely Learning And Thinking About The Christian Doctrines, If You Stop There, Is Less Real And Less Exciting Than The Sort Of Thing My Friend Got In The Desert. Doctrines Are Not God: They Are Only A Kind Of Map. But That Map Is Based On The Experience Of Hundreds Of People Who Really Were In Touch With God--experiences Compared With Which Many Thrills Of Pious Feelings You And I Are Likely To Get On Our Own Are Very Elementary And Very Confused. And Secondly, If You Want To Get Any Further You Must Use The Map.

I May Repeat 'do As You Would Be Done By' Till I Am Black In The Face, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbor As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbor As Myself Till I Learn To Love God;and I Cannot Learn To Love God Except By Learning To Obey Him.

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.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

Do Not Dare Not To Dare.

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.

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

Nothing Which Is At All Times And In Every Way Agreeable To Us Can Have Objective Reality. It Is Of The Very Nature Of The Real That It Should Have Sharp Corners And Rough Edges, That It Should Be Resistant, Should Be Itself. Dream-furniture Is The Only Kind On Which You Never Stub Your Toes Or Bang Your Knee.

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

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.

My Friendship You Shall Have, Leanred Man," Piped Reepicheep. "and Any Dwarf--or Giant---in The Army Who Does Not Give You Good Language Shall Have My Sword To Reckon With.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal. Nations, Cultures, Arts, Civilizations - These Are Mortal, And Their Life Is To Ours As The Life Of A Gnat. But It Is Immortals Whom We Joke With, Work With, Marry, Snub And Exploit - Immortal Horrors Or Everlasting Splendors. This Does Not Mean That We Are To Be Perpetually Solemn. We Must Play. But Our Merriment Must Be Of That Kind (and It Is, In Fact, The Merriest Kind) Which Exists Between People Who Have, From The Outset, Taken Each Other Seriously - No Flippancy, No Superiority, No Presumption.

A Man Who First Tried To Guess 'what The Public Wants,' And Then Preached That As Christianity Because The Public Wants It, Would Be A Pretty Mixture Of Fool And Knave

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

The 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.

For A Long Time I Used To Think This A Silly, Straw-splitting Distinction: How Could You Hate What A Man Did And Not Hate The Man? But Years Later It Occurred To Me That There Was One Man To Whom I Had Been Doing This All My Life - Namely Myself.

It Is A Good Rule After Reading A New Book, Never To Allow Yourself Another New One Till You Have Read An Old One In Between.

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

In Great Literature, I Become A Thousand Different Men But Still Remain Myself.

I Desired Dragons With A Profound Desire.

In Those Days A Boy On The Classical Side Officially Did Almost Nothing But Classics. I Think This Was Wise; The Greatest Service We Can To Education Today Is To Teach Few Subjects. No One Has Time To Do More Than A Very Few Things Well Before He Is Twenty, And When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

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.

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 Is, Of Course, Quite True That God Will Not Love You Any Less, Or Have Less Use For You, If You Happen To Have Been Born With A Very Second-rate Brain.

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.

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

The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

Don't Use Words Too Big For The Subject. Don't Say 'infinitely' When You Mean 'very'; Otherwise You'll Have No Word Left When You Want To Talk About Something Really Infinite.

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

But However Happy You Are Feeling, You Can't Talk With Your Mouth Full Of Snow.

God Has Not Been Trying An Experiment On My Faith Or Love In Order To Find Out Their Quality. He Knew It Already. It Was I Who Didn't. In This Trial He Makes Us Occupy The Dock, The Witness Box, And The Bench All At Once. He Always Knew That My Temple Was A House Of Cards. His Only Way Of Making Me Realize The Fact Was To Knock It Down.

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

Many Things, Such As Loving, Going To Sleep, Or Behaving Unaffectedly - Are Done Worst When We Try Hardest To Do Them.

If You Are Really A Product Of A Materialistic Universe, How Is It That You Don't Feel At Home There?

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

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are Only The Picture. You Can't See It. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted---i.e., Keep Fulfilling All The Obvious Duties Of Your Station (you Really Know Quite Well Enough What They Are!), Asking Forgiveness For Each Failure And Then Leaving It Alone.you Are In The Right Way. Walk---don't Keep On Looking At It.

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

When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

It Doesn't Really Matter Whether You Grip The Arms Of The Dentist's Chair Or Let Your Hands Lie In Your Lap. The Drill Drills On.

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

You Would Not Have Called To Me Unless I Had Been Calling To You," Said The Lion.

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

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

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

Seek Unity And You Will Find Neither Unity Nor Truth.seek The Light Of Truth, And You Will Find Unity And Truth.

When Things Go Wrong, You'll Find They Usually Go On Getting Worse For Some Time; But When Things Once Start Going Right They Often Go On Getting Better And Better.

When Things Go Wrong

And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

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

Got To Start By Finding It, Have We? Can't Start By Looking For It, I Suppose?

Every Joy Is Beyond All Others.

Any Patch Of Sunlight In A Wood Will Show You Something About The Sun Which You Could Never Get From Reading Books On Astronomy. These Pure And Spontaneous Pleasures Are ‘patches Of Godlight’ In The Woods Of Our Experience.

Materialism Is In Fact No Protection. Those Who Seek It In That Hope (they Are Not A Negligible Class) Will Be Disappointed. The Thing You Fear Is Impossible. Well And Good. Can You Therefore Cease To Fear It? Not Here And Now. And What Then? If You Must See Ghosts, It Is Better Not To Disbelieve In Them.

Write About What Really Interests You, Whether It Is Real Things Or Imaginary Things, And Nothing Else. (notice This Means That If You Are Interested Only In Writing You Will Never Be A Writer, Because You Will Have Nothing To Write About...)

Jesus Produced Mainly Three Effects: Hatred, Terror, Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Approval.

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.

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.

If Christianity Is Only One More Bit Of Good Advice, Then Christianity Is Of No Importance.

The Real Moon,if You Could Reach It And Survive It, Would In A Deep And Deadly Sense Be Just Like Anywhere Else...no Man Would Find An Abiding Strangness On The Moon Unless He Were The Sort Of Man Who Could Find It In His Own Back Garden.

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

Daughter Of Eve From The Far Land Of Spare Oom Where Eternal Summer Reigns Around The Bright City Of War Drobe, How Would It Be If You Came And Had Tea With Me?

...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

Long Before History Began We Men Have Got Together Apart From The Women And Done Things. We Had Time.

You Come Of The Lord Adam And The Lady Eve," Said Aslan. "and That Is Both Honour Enough To Erect The Head Of The Poorest Beggar, And Shame Enough To Bow The Shoulders Of The Greatest Emperor On Earth. Be Content.

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

Praise Is The Mode Of Love Which Always Has Some Element Of Joy In It.

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.

To Love You As I Should, I Must Worship God As Creator. When I Have Learnt To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now. In So Far As I Learn To Love My Earthly Dearest At The Expense Of God And Instead Of God, I Shall Be Moving Towards The State In Which I Shall Not Love My Earthly Dearest T All. When First Things Are Put First, Second Things Are Not Suppressed Bu Increased.

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. 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. That Is Why It Is Just No Good Asking God To Make Us Happy In Our Own Way Without Bothering About Religion. God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There.

The Enemy Will Not See You Vanish Into God's Company Without An Effort To Reclaim You.

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.

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

If Minds Are Wholly Dependent On Brains And Brains On Biochemistry, And Biochemistry (in The Long Run) On The Meaningless Flux Of The Atoms, I Cannot Understand How The Thought Of Those Minds Should Have Any More Significance Than The Sound Of The Wind In The Trees.

What Does Seem To Me Poisonous, What Breeds A Type Of Patriotism That Is Pernicious If It Lasts But Not Likely To Last Long In An Educated Adult, Is The Perfectly Serious Indoctrination Of The Young In Knowably False Or Biased History - The Heroic Legend Drably Disguised As Text-book Fact. With This Creeps In The Tacit Assumption That Other Nations Have Not Equally Their Heroes; Perhaps Even The Belief - Surely It Is Very Bad Biology - That We Can Literally 'inherit' Tradition.

In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.

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.

God Has No Needs. Human Love, As Plato Teaches Us, Is The Child Of Poverty – Of Want Or Lack; It Is Caused By A Real Or Supposed Goal In Its Beloved Which The Lover Needs And Desires. But God's Love, Far From Being Caused By Goodness In The Object, Causes All The Goodness Which The Object Has, Loving It First Into Existence, And Then Into Real, Though Derivative, Lovability. God Is Goodness. He Can Give Good, But Cannot Need Or Get It. In That Sense , His Love Is, As It Were, Bottomlessly Selfless By Very Definition; It Has Everything To Give, And Nothing To Receive.

If Education Is Beaten By Training, Civilization Dies.

A Pleasure Is Full Grown Only When It Is Remembered. You Are Speaking, Hmán, As If Pleasure Were One Thing And The Memory Another. It Is All One Thing.

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.

I'm Hunger. I'm Thirst. Where I Bite, I Hold Till I Die, And Even After Death They Must Cut Out My Mouthful From My Enemy's Body And Bury It With Me. I Can Fast A Hundred Years And Not Die. I Can Lie A Hundred Nights On The Ice And Not Freeze. I Can Drink A River Of Blood And Not Burst. Show Me Your Enemies.

There Is No Other Day. All Days Are Present Now. This Moment Contains All Moments.

Regarding The Debate About Faith And Works: It's Like Asking Which Blade In A Pair Of Scissors Is Most Important.

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."

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

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

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

Men Propound Mathematical Theorems In Besieged Cities, Conduct Metaphysical Arguments In Condemned Cells, Make Jokes On The Scaffold, Discuss A New Poem While Advancing To The Walls Of Quebec, And Comb Their Hair At Thermopylae. This Is Not Panache; It Is Our Nature.

A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading.

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

Very Few Modern People Think Friendship A Love Of Comparable Value Or Even A Love At All.

Aslan: You Doubt Your Value. Don't Run From Who You Are.

The Promise, Made When I Am In Love, To Be True To The Beloved As Long As I Live, Commits Me To Being True Even If I Cease To Be In Love.

All Day I Have Been Tossed And Whirled In A Preposterous Happiness; Was It An Elf In The Blood? Or A Bird In The Brain? Or Even Part Of The Cloudily Crested, Fifty-league-long, Loud, Uplifted Wave Of A Journeying Angels Transit Over And Through My Heart?

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues.

Those Who Tread 'adult' As A Term Of Approval Cannot Hope To Be Considered Adult Themselves. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Along With The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

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

If You Are A Christian You Do Not Have To Believe That All The Other Religions Are Simply Wrong All Through. If You Are An Atheist You Do Have To Believe That The Main Point In All The Religions Of The Whole World Is Simply One Huge Mistake.

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

If You Asked Twenty Good Men To-day What They Thought The Highest Of The Virtues, Nineteen Of Them Would Reply, Unselfishness. But If You Asked Almost Any Of The Great Christians Of Old He Would Have Replied, Love - You See What Has Happened? A Negative Term Has Been Substituted For A Positive, And This Is Of More Than Philological Importance. The Negative Ideal Of Unselfishness Carries With It The Suggestion Not Primarily Of Securing Good Things For Others, But Of Going Without Them Ourselves, As If Our Abstinence And Not Their Happiness Was The Important Point.

When You Argue Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him.

Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.

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

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

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

There Is Something In Natural Affection Which Will Lead It On To Eternal Love More Easily Than Natural Appetite Could Be Led On. But There's Also Something In It Which Makes It Easier To Stop At The Natural Level And Mistake It For The Heavenly. Brass Is Mistaken For Gold More Easily Than Clay Is. And If It Finally Refuses Conversion Its Corruption Will Be Worse Than The Corruption Of What Ye Call The Lower Passions. It Is A Stronger Angel, And Therefor, When It Falls, A Fiercer Devil.

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

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.

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

You Die And Die And Then You Are Beyond Death.

There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.

Someone You Love

As Image And Apprehension Are In Organic Unity, So, For A Christian, Are Human Body And Human Soul.

Meaningless Combinations Of Words Do Not Suddenly Acquire Meaning Simply Because We Prefix To Them The Two Other Words ' God Can'.

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

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

People Talk As If Grief Were Just A Feeling -- As If It Weren't The Continually Renewed Shock Of Setting Out Again And Again On Familiar Roads And Being Brought Up Short By The Grim Frontier Post That Now Blocks Them.

To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

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.

I Gave Up Christianity At About 14. Came Back To It When Getting On For 30. Not An Emotional Conversion; Almost Purely Philosophical. I Didn't Want To. I'm Not In The Least A Religious Type. I Want To Be Let Alone, To Feel I'm My Own Master; But Since The Facts Seemed To Be Just The Opposite, I Had To Give In.

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

You Can Put This Another Way By Saying That While In Other Sciences The Instruments You Use Are Things External To Yourself (things Like Microscopes And Telescopes), The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred - Like The Moon Seen Through A Dirty Telescope. That Is Why Horrible Nations Have Horrible Religions: They Have Been Looking At God Through A Dirty Lens.

Here The Whole World (stars, Water, Air, And Field, And Forest, As They Were Reflected In A Single Mind) Like Cast Off Clothes Was Left Behind In Ashes, Yet With Hopes That She, Re-born From Holy Poverty, In Lenten Lands, Hereafter May Resume Them On Her Easter Day." (epitaph For Joy Gresham)

We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.

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

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

Who Can Endure A Doctrine Which Would Allow Only Dentists To Say Whether Our Teeth Were Aching, Only Cobblers To Say Whether Our Shoes Hurt Us, And Only Governments To Tell Us Whether We Were Being Well Governed?

We Do Not Want Merely To See Beauty... We Want Something Else Which Can Hardly Be Put Into Words- To Be United With The Beauty We See, To Pass Into It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Bathe In It, To Become Part Of It. That Is Why We Have Peopled Air And Earth And Water With Gods And Goddesses, And Nymphs And Elves.

Faith In Christ Is The Only Thing To Save You From Despair.

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