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I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

-C. S. Lewis

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I Believe That Many

C. S. Lewis

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I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

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Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.

We Must Stop Regarding Unpleasant Or Unexpected Things As Interruptions Of Real Life. The Truth Is That Interruptions Are Real Life.

God Descends To Re-ascend. He Comes Down; Down From The Heights Of Absolute Being Into Time And Space, Down Into Humanity ... Down To The Very Roots And Sea-bed Of The Nature He Has Created. But He Goes Down To Come Up Again And Bring The Ruined World Up With Him.

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

It May Be Hard For An Egg To Turn Into A Bird: It Would Be A Jolly Sight Harder For It To Learn To Fly While Remaining An Egg. We Are Like Eggs At Present. And You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

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.

I Hope I Do Not Offend God By Making My Communions In The Frame Of Mind I Have Been Describing. The Command, After All, Was Take, Eat: Not Take, Understand.

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

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.

Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.

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

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

We Ought To Give Thanks For All Fortune: If It Is Good, Because It Is Good; If Bad, Because It Works In Us Patience, Humility, Contempt Of This World And The Hope Of Our Eternal Country.

Christianity Has Not Message For Those Who Do Not Realize They Are Sinners.

...if All We Mean By Our Love Is A Craving To Be Loved, We Are In A Very Deplorable State.

It May Be Better To Live Under Robber Barons Than Under Omnipotent Moral Busybodies.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

It Is Christ Himself, Not The Bible, Who Is The True Word Of God. The Bible, Read In The Right Spirit And With The Guidance Of Good Teachers, Will Bring Us To Him.

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

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

You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

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.

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...)

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.

He Thinks Great Folly, Child,' Said Aslan. "this World Is Bursting With Life For These Few Days Because The Song With Which I Called It Into Life Still Hangs In The Air And Rumbles In The Ground. It Will Not Be So For Long. But I Cannot Tell That To This Old Sinner, And I Cannot Comfort Him Either; He Has Made Himself Unable To Hear My Voice. If I Spoke To Him, He Would Hear Only Growlings And Roarings. Oh, Adam's Son, How Cleverly You Defend Yourself Against All That Might Do You Good!

Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.

Some People Probably Think Of The Resurrection As A Desperate Last Moment Expedient To Save The Hero From A Situation Which Had Got Out Of The Author's Control.

Christianity Does Not Want Us To Reduce By One Atom The Hatred We Feel For Cruelty And Treachery. We Ought To Hate Them. Not One Word Of What We Have Said About Them Needs To Be Unsaid. But It Does Want Us To Hate Them In The Same Way In Which We Hate Things In Ourselves: Being Sorry That The Man Should Have Done Such Things, And Hoping, If It Is Anyway Possible, That Somehow, Sometime, Somewhere He Can Be Cured And Made Human Again.

In Such A Fearful World, We Need A Fearless Church

Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth. What You Now Call The Free Play Of Inquiry Has Neither More Nor Less To Do With The Ends For Which Intelligence Was Given You Than Masturbation Has To Do With Marriage.

Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

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

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

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is). What Is Going On In You At Present Is Simply The Beginning Of The Treatment. Continue Seeking With Cheerful Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

Remember That All Worlds Draw To An End And That Noble Death Is A Treasure Which No One Is Too Poor To Buy.

Hatred Obscures All Distinctions.

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

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

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

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

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?

There Is, Hidden Or Flaunted, A Sword Between The Sexes Till An Entire Marriage Reconciles Them.

The Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility...according To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride. Unchastity, Anger, Greed, Drunkenness, And All That, Are Mere Flea Bites In Comparison: It Was Through Pride That The Devil Became The Devil: Pride Leads To Every Other Vice: It Is The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

Wrong Will Be Right, When Aslan Comes In Sight, At The Sound Of His Roar, Sorrows Will Be No More, When He Bares His Teeth, Winter Meets Its Death, And When He Shakes His Mane, We Shall Have Spring Again.

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

Quarrelling Means Trying To Show That The Other Man Is In The Wrong. (and) There Is No Sense In Trying To Do That Unless You And He Had Some Sort Of Agreement As To What Righ And Wrong Are.

If I Find In Myself A Desire Which No Experience In This World Can Satisfy, The Most Probable Explanation Is That I Was Made For Another World.

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

He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Don't Say It Was "delightful"; Make Us Say "delightful" When We've Read The Description.

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him. Nobody Can Always Have Devout Feelings: And Even If We Could, Feelings Are Not What God Principally Cares About. Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

How Incessant And Great Are The Ills With Which A Prolonged Old Age Is Replete.

No Interviews Without Appointments Except Between Nine And Ten P.m. On Second Saturdays.

Each Time You Fall He'll Pick You Up. He Knows Your Own Efforts Are Never Going To Bring You Anywhere Near Perfection

Remember, We Christians Think Man Lives For Ever. Therefore, What Really Matters Is Those Little Marks Or Twists On The Central, Inside Part Of The Soul Which Are Going To Turn It, In The Long Run, Into A Heavenly Or A Hellish Creature.

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

It's All Love Or Sex These Days. Friendship Is Almost As Quaint And Outdated A Notion As Chastity. Soon Friends Will Be Like The Elves And The Pixies - Fabulous Mythical Creatures From A Distant Past.

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

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

It Is Often Little Things That Are Hardest To Stand.

One Always Feel Better When One Has Made Up One's Mind.

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

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.

Much Of The Modern Resistance To Chastity Comes From Men's Belief That They 'own' Their Bodies—those Vast And Perilous Estates, Pulsating With The Energy That Made The Worlds, In Which They Find Themselves Without Their Consent And From Which They Are Ejected At The Pleasure Of Another!

You Can't Really Study People; You Can Only Get To Know Them.

I Mean, The More A Man Was In The Devil's Power, The Less He Would Be Aware Of It, On The Principle That A Man Is Still Fairly Sober As Long As He Knows He's Drunk.

Let Me Make It Quite Clear That When Christians Say The Christ-life Is In Them, They Do Not Mean Simply Something Mental Or Moral. When They Speak Of Being "in Christ" Or Of Christ Being "in Them", This Is Not Simply A Way Of Saying That They Are Thinking About Christ Or Copying Him. They Mean That Christ Is Actually Operating Through Them; That The Whole Mass Of Christians Are The Physical Organism Through Which Christ Acts--that We Are His Fingers And Muscles, The Cells Of His Body.

Life Is Too Deep For Words, So Don't Try To Describe It, Just Live It.

Self Improvement

Everything Is As Good Or Bad As Our Opinion Makes It.

A World Of Automata – Of Creatures That Worked Like Machines – Would Hardly Be Worth Creating.

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

He Came To This World And Became A Man In Order To Spread To Other Men The Kind Of Life He Has - By What I Call 'good Infection'. Every Christian Is To Become A Little Christ. The Whole Purpose Of Becoming A Christian Is Simply Nothing Else.

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

In Coming To Understand Anything We Are Rejecting The Facts As They Are For Us In Favour Of The Facts As They Are.

He Wants Them To Learn To Walk And Must Therefore Take Away His Hand.

Screwtape Letters

There Is But One Good; That Is God. Everything Else Is Good When It Looks To Him And Bad When It Turns From Him.

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."

Be Good, Sweet Maid, And Don't Forget That This Involves Being As Clever As You Can.

Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Also Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Wouldn't Be A Great Moral Teacher. He'd Be Either A Lunatic On A Level With A Man Who Says He's A Poached Egg Or Else He'd Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse.

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

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

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.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai.

Those Who Do Not Think About Their Own Sins Make Up For It By Thinking Incessantly About The Sins Of Others.

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

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.'

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

Now We Cannot...discover Our Failure To Keep God's Law Except By Trying Our Very Hardest (and Then Failing). Unless We Really Try, Whatever We Say There Will Always Be At The Back Of Our Minds The Idea That If We Try Harder Next Time We Shall Succeed In Being Completely Good. Thus, In One Sense, The Road Back To God Is A Road Of Moral Effort, Of Trying Harder And Harder. But In Another Sense It Is Not Trying That Is Ever Going Tobring Us Home. All This Trying Leads Up To The Vital Moment At Which You Turn To God And Say, "you Must Do This. I Can't.

The Worst Of Sleeping Out Of Doors Is That You Wake Up So Dreadfully Early. And When You Wake Up You Have To Get Up Because The Ground Is So Hard You Are Uncomfortable. And It Makes Matters Worse If There Is Nothing But Apples For Breakfast And You Have Had Nothing But Apples For Supper The Night Before.

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.

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)

I Think He Made One Law Of That Kind In Order That There Might Be Obedience. In All These Other Matters What You Call Obeying Him Is But Doing What Seems Good In Your Own Eyes Also. Is Love Content With That?

Anyone Who Is Honestly Trying To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened: One Of The Reasons Why It Needs No Special Education To Be A Christian Is That Christianity Is An Education Itself. That Is Why An Uneducated Believer Like Bunyan Was Able To Write A Book That Has Astonished The Whole World.

Man Is To Be Understood Only In His Relationship To God.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

The Real Trouble About The Duty Of Forgiveness Is That You Do It With All Your Might On Monday And Then Find On Wednesday That It Hasn't Stayed Put And All Has To Be Done Over Again.

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.

You'll Never Make A Good Impression On Other People Until You Stop Thinking What Sort Of Impression You Make.

The Absent Are Easily Refuted.

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

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 Could Never Have Gone Far In Any Science Because On The Path Of Every Science The Lion Mathematics Lies In Wait For You.

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

The Search For A "suitable" Church Makes The Man A Critic Where God Wants Him To Be A Pupil. What He Wants From The Layman In Church Is An Attitude Which May, Indeed, Be Critical In The Sense Of Rejecting What Is False Or Unhelpful But Which Is Wholly Uncritical In The Sense That It Does Not Appraise- Does Not Waste Time In Thinking About What It Rejects, But Lays Itself Open In Uncommenting, Humble Receptivity To Any Nourishment That Is Going.

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. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.

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

Daughter, I Have Now Lived A Hundred And Nine Winters In This World And Have Never Yet Met Any Such Thing As Luck. There Is Something About All This That I Do Not Understand: But If Ever We Need To Know It, You May Be Sure That We Shall.

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

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

For In Grief Nothing "stays Put." One Keeps On Emerging From A Phase, But It Always Recurs. Round And Round. Everything Repeats. Am I Going In Circles, Or Dare I Hope I Am On A Spiral? But If A Spiral, Am I Going Up Or Down It? How Often -- Will It Be For Always? -- How Often Will The Vast Emptiness Astonish Me Like A Complete Novelty And Make Me Say, "i Never Realized My Loss Till This Moment"? The Same Leg Is Cut Off Time After Time.

When They Have Really Learned To Love Their Neighbours As Themselves, They Will Be Allowed To Love Themselves As Their Neighbours.

Screwtape Letters

Above All Else , The Devil Can Not Stand To Be Mocked.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest.

It's Like The Sound Of A Chuckle In The Darkness. The Sense That Some Shattering And Disarming Simplicity Is The Real Answer.

The Christian Is In A Different Position From Other People Who Are Trying To Be Good. They Hope, By Being Good, To Please God If There Is One; Or — If They Think There Is Not — At Least They Hope To Deserve Approval From Good Men. But The Christian Thinks Any Good He Does Comes From The Christ-life Inside Him. He Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us; Just As The Roof Of A Greenhouse Does Not Attract The Sun Because It Is Bright, But Becomes Bright Because The Sun Shines On It.

How Difficult It Is To Avoid Having A Special Standard For Oneself.

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.

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

Extraordinary Things Only Happen To Extraordinary People. Maybe It's A Sign That You've Got An Extraordinary Destiny--something Greater Than You Could've Imagined.

Extraordinary Things

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.

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

The Only Thing Christianity Can Not Be...is Moderately Important.

Nobody Who Gets Enough Food And Clothing In A World Where Most Are Hungry And Cold Has Any Business To Talk About 'misery.'

The Thing Is To Rely On God. The Time Will Come When You Will Regard All This Misery As A Small Price To Pay For Having Been Brought To That Dependence. Meanwhile, The Trouble Is That Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Has Yet Been Done.

He Told People That Their Sins Were Forgiven, And Never Waited To Consult All The Other People Whom Their Sins Had Undoubtedly Injured. He Unhesitatingly Behaved As If He Was The Party Chiefly Concerned, The Person Chiefly Offended In All Offenses. This Makes Sense Only If He Really Was God Whose Laws Are Broken And Whose Love Is Wounded In Every Sin.

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

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

Lucy Went First, Biting Her Lip And Trying Not To Say All The Things She Thought Of Saying To Susan. But She Forgot Them When She Fixed Her Eyes On Aslan.

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

It May Well Be That By Trickery Of Priests Men Have Sometimes Taken A Mortal's Voice For A God's. But It Will Not Work The Other Way. No One Who Hears A God's Voice Takes It For A Man's.

Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.

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.

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

We Want To Know Not How We Should Pray If We Were Perfect But How We Should Pray Being As We Now Are ... It Is No Use To Ask God With Factitious Earnestness For A When Our Whole Mind Is In Reality Filled With The Desire For B. We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us, Not What Ought To Be In Us.

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

Man Approaches God Most Nearly When He Is In One Sense Least Like God. For What Can Be More Unlike Than Fullness And Need, Sovereignty And Humility, Righteousness And Penitence, Limitless Power And A Cry For Help?

Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.

Philanthropy Giving

And As Jill Gazed At Its Motionless Bulk, She Realized That She Might As Well Have Asked The Whole Mountain To Move Aside For Her Convenience.

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

Everywhere, Except In Theology, There Has Been A Vigorous Growth Of Skepticism About Skepticism Itself.

Now Eros Makes A Man Really Want, Not A Woman, But One Particular Woman. In Some Mysterious But Quite Indisputable Fashion The Lover Desires The Beloved Herself, Not The Pleasure She Can Give.

Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness.

No Justification Of Virtue Will Enable A Man To Be Virtuous. Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism. I Had Sooner Play Cards Against A Man Who Was Quite Skeptical About Ethics, But Bred To Believe That ‘a Gentleman Does Not Cheat’, Than Against An Irreproachable Moral Philosopher Who Had Been Brought Up Among Sharpers.

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

It Isn't Narnia, You Know," Sobbed Lucy. "it's You. We Shan't Meet You There. And How Can We Live, Never Meeting You?" "but You Shall Meet Me, Dear One," Said Aslan. "are -are You There Too, Sir?" Said Edmund. "i Am," Said Aslan. "but There I Have Another Name. You Must Learn To Know Me By That Name. 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.

I Have Seen Something Like It Happen In Battle. A Man Was Coming At Me, I At Him, To Kill. Then Came A Sudden Great Gust Of Wind That Wrapped Out Cloaks Over Our Swords And Almost Over Our Eyes, So That We Could Do Nothing To One Another But Must Fight The Wind Itself. And That Ridiculous Contention, So Foreign To The Business We Were On, Set Us Both Laughing, Face To Face - Friends For A Moment - And Then At Once Enemies Again And Forever.

I Have Been Trying To Make The Reader Believe That We Actually Are, At Present, Creatures Whose Character Must Be, In Some Respects, A Horror To God, As It Is, When We Really See It, A Horror To Ourselves. This I Believe To Be A Fact: And I Notice That The Holier A Man Is, The More Fully He Is Aware Of That Fact.

Language Exists To Communicate Whatever It Can Communicate. Some Things It Communicates So Badly That We Never Attempt To Communicate Them By Words If Any Other Medium Is Available.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.... Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses. If He Is Your Christian Neighbor He Is Holy In Almost The Same Way, For In Him Also Christ Verse Latitat - The Glorifier And The Glorified, Glory Himself, Is Truly Hidden.

The Change Which The Writing Wrought In Me (and Of Which I Did Not Write) Was Only A Beginning; Only To Prepare Me For The Gods' Surgery. They Used My Own Pen To Probe My Wound.

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

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

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

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

Narnia! It's All In The Wardrobe Just Like I Told You!

Lion Witch Wardrobe

Ye Cannot Know Eternal Reality By A Definition. Time Itself, And All The Acts And Events That Fill Time Are The Definition, And It Must Be Lived.

I Don't Want Him To Live Forever, And I Know That He's Not Going To Live Forever Whether I Want Him To Or Not.

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

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

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.

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

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.

But In General, Take My Advice, When You Meet Anything That Is Going To Be Human And Isn’t Yet, Or Used To Be Human Once And Isn’t Now, Or Ought To Be Human And Isn’t, You Keep Your Eyes On It And Feel For Your Hatchet.

There Seems To Be Hardly Any One Among My Acquaintance From Whom I Have Not Learned.

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

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

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law.

The Command "be Ye Prfect" Is Not Idealistic Gas. Nor Is It A Command To Do The Impossible. He Said (in The Bible) That We Were "gods" And He Is Going To Make Good His Words. He Will Make Us Into A God Or Goddess, A Dazzling, Radiant, Immortal Creature...a Bright Stainless Mirror Which Reflects Back To God Perfectly.

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.

When The Opposite Of Your Prayer Occurs, Your Prayer Hasn't Been Ignored; It's Been Considered & Refused For Your Ultimate Good.

To Live In A Fully Predictable World Is Not To Be A Man.

Of Course All Children's Literature Is Not Fantastic, So All Fantastic Books Need Not Be Children's Books. It Is Still Possible, Even In An Age So Ferociously Anti-romantic As Our Own, To Write Fantastic Stories For Adults: Though You Will Usually Need To Have Made A Name In Some More Fashionable Kind Of Literature Before Anyone Will Publish Them.

Don't Shine So That Others Can See You. Shine So That Through You, Others Can See Him.

I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

Every Age Has Its Own Outlook. It Is Specially Good At Seeing Certain Truths And Specially Liable To Make Certain Mistakes. We All, Therefore, Need The Books That Will Correct The Characteristic Mistake Of Our Own Period. And That Means The Old Books.

You Can't Know, You Can Only Believe - Or Not.

The Human Mind Has No More Power Of Inventing A New Value Than Of Planting A New Sun In The Sky Or A New Primary Color In The Spectrum.

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

The Rule Of The Universe Is That Others Can Do For Us What We Cannot Do For Ourselves, And One Can Paddle Every Canoe Except One's Own.

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.

Be Sure That The Ins And Outs Of Your Individuality Are No Mystery To Him; And One Day They Will No Longer Be A Mystery To You.

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

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.

The Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).

I Can Answer That Only By Hearsay, Returned The Guide, For Pain Is A Secret Which He Has Shared With Your Race And Not With Mine; And You Would Find It As Hard To Explain Suffering To Me As I Would Find It To Reveal To You The Secrets Of The Mountain People. But Those Who Know Best Say This, That Any Liberal Man Would Choose The Pain Of This Desire, Even For Ever, Rather Than The Peace Of Feeling It No Longer; And That Though The Best Thing Is To Have, The Next Best Is To Want, And The Worst Of All Is Not To Want.

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

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.

Ah, Poor Pole. It's Been To Much For Her, This Last Bit. Turned Her Head, I Shouldn't Wonder. She's Beginning To See Things.

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

I Want God, Not My Idea Of God.

For Narnia And For Aslan!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

The Purpose Of All Opprobrious Language Is, Not To Describe, But To Hurt - Even When, Like Hamlet, We Make Only The Shadow-passes Of A Soliloquised Combat. We Call The Enemy Not What We Think He Is But What We Think He Would Least Like To Be Called.

Once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

Liking An Author May Be As Involuntary And Improbable As Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

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.

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