Background Image

...

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.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Gave Up Christianity

C. S. Lewis

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

Of All Tyrannies A Tyranny Sincerely Exercised For The Good Of Its Victims May Be The Most Oppressive.

Morality Is A Mountain Which We Cannot Climb By Our Own Efforts; And If We Could We Should Only Perish In The Ice And Unbreathable Air Of The Summit, Lacking Those Wings With Which The Rest Of The Journey Has To Be Accomplished. For It Is From There That The Real Ascent Begins. The Ropes And Axes Are 'done Away' And The Rest Is A Matter Of Flying.

It Is In The Process Of Being Worshipped That God Communicates His Presence To Men.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

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.

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.

Now The Trouble About Trying To Make Yourself Stupider Than You Really Are Is That You Very Often Succeed.

I Am Suffering Incessant Temptations To Uncharitable Thoughts At Present; One Of Those Black Moods In Which Nearly All One's Friends Seem To Be Selfish Or Even False. And How Terrible That There Should Be Even A Kind Of Pleasure In Thinking Evil.

Before We Can Be Cured We Must Want To Be Cured. Those Who Really Wish For Help Will Get It; But For Many Modern People Even The Wish Is Difficult.

My Will, Shall Become Your Will. My Heart, Shall Become Your Heart.

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.

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

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

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest." He Also Said: "no Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally - And Often Far More - Worth Reading At The Age Of 50 And Beyond.

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

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

Are The Gods Not Just?' 'oh No, Child. What Would Become Us Us If They Were?

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

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

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.

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.

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.

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.

We Thought The Duke Would Have Been Pleased If The King's Majesty Would Have Married His Daughter, But Nothing Came Of That--' Squints, And Has Freckles,' Said Caspian. Oh, Poor Girl,' Said Lucy.

A Catholic Priest, A Jewish Rabbi, And A Muslim Mullah All Walk Into A Bar, And The Bartender Says: - What Is This, A Joke? - Сhurch Is The Only Organization That Exists Primarily For The Benefit Of Non-members.

A Real Desire To Believe All The Good You Can Of Others And To Make Others As Comfortable As You Can Will Solve Most Of The Problems.

Love May, Indeed, Love The Beloved When Her Beauty Is Lost: But Not Because It Is Lost. Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal. Love Is More Sensitive Than Hatred Itself To Every Blemish In The Beloved… Of All Powers He Forgives Most, But He Condones Least: He Is Pleased With Little, But Demands All.

In Our Adversity, God Shouts To Us.

There Is Nothing Indulgent About The Moral Law. It Is As Hard As Nails. If God Is Like The Moral Law, Then He Is Not Soft.

What You Want Is Practice, Practice, Practice. It Doesn’t Matter What We Write (at Least This Is My View) At Our Age, So Long As We Write Continually As Well As We Can. I Feel That Every Time I Write A Page Either Of Prose Or Of Verse, With Real Effort, Even If It’s Thrown Into The Fire The Next Minute, I Am So Much Further On.

The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start.

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

The Modern Idea Of A Great Man Is One Who Stands At The Lonely Extremity Of Some Single Line Of Development--

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

Safe?” Said Mr. Beaver; “don’t You Hear What Mrs. Beaver Tells You? Who Said Anything About Safe? ‘course He Isn’t Safe. But He’s Good. He’s The King, I Tell You.

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

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

The Full Acting Out Of The Self's Surrender To God Therefore Demands Pain: This Action, To Be Perfect, Must Be Done From The Pure Will To Obey, In The Absence, Or In The Teeth, Of Inclination

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?

"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..."

The People Who Keep Asking If They Can't Lead A Decent Life Without Christ, Don't Know What Life Is About; If They Did They Would Know That 'a Decent Life' Is Mere Machinery Compared With The Thing We Men Are Really Made For.

Shut Your Mouth; Open Your Eyes And Ears.

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

She Did Not Shut It Properly Because She Knew That It Is Very Silly To Shut Oneself Into A Wardrobe, Even If It Is Not A Magic One.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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

The Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do.

Only A Real Risk Tests The Reality Of A Belief.

Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.

Who Can Duly Adore That Love Which Will Open The High Gates To A Prodigal Who Is Brought In Kicking, Struggling, Resentful, And Darting His Eyes In Every Direction For A Chance Of Escape? The Words Compelle Intrare, Compel Them To Come In, Have Been So Abused By Wicked Men That We Shudder At Them; But, Properly Understood, They Plumb The Depth Of The Divine Mercy. The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Man, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.

The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.

A Great Deal Of What Is Being Published By Writers In The Religious Tradition Is A Scandal And Is Actually Turning People Away From The Church. The Liberal Writers Who Are Continually Accommodating And Whittling Down The Truth Of The Gospel Are Responsible.

As To...old Composers Like Schubert Or Beethoven, I Imagine That, While Modern Music Expresses Both Feeling, Thought And Imagination, They Expressed Pure Feeling. And You Know All Day Sitting At Work, Eating, Walking, Etc., You Have Hundreds Of Feelings That Can't Be Put Into Words. And That Is Why I Think That In A Sense Music Is The Highest Of The Arts, Because It Really Begins Where The Others Leave Off.

In Gethsemane The Holiest Of All Petitioners Prayed Three Times That A Certain Cup Might Pass From Him. It Did Not.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World.

Screwtape Letters

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

I Do Not Doubt That If The Paradisal Man Could Now Appear Among Us, We Should Regard Him As An Utter Savage, A Creature To Be Exploited Or, At Best, Patronised. Only One Or Two, And Those The Holiest Among Us, Would Glance A Second Time At The Naked, Shaggy-bearded, Slow Spoken Creature: But They, After A Few Minutes, Would Fall At His Feet.

Nature Never Taught Me That There Exists A God Of Glory And Of Infinite Majesty. I Had To Learn That In Other Ways. But Nature Gave The Word Glory A Meaning For Me. I Still Do Not Know Where Else I Could Have Found One.

Pity Was Meant To Be A Spur That Drives Joy To Help Misery. But It Can Be Used The Wrong Way Round. It Can Be Used For A Kind Of Blackmailing. Those Who Choose Misery Can Hold Joy Up To Ransom, By Pity.

As Long As You Notice, And Have To Count The Steps, You Are Not Yet Dancing But Only Learning To Dance. A Good Shoe Is A Shoe You Don't Notice. Good Reading Becomes Possible When You Need Not Conciously Think About Eyes, Or Light, Or Print, Or Spelling. The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God.

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

Perhaps Civilization Will Never Be Safe Until We Care For Something Else More Than We Care For It. The Hypothesis Has Certain Facts To Support It. As Far As Peace (which Is One Ingredient In Our Idea Of Civilization)is Concerned, I Think Many Would Now Agree That A Foreign Policy Dominated By Desire For Peace Is One Of The Many Roads That Lead To War.

Thus We Have Now For Many Centuries Triumphed Over Nature To The Extent Of Making Certain Secondary Characteristics Of The Male (such As The Beard) Disagreeable To Nearly All The Females—and There Is More In That Than You Might Suppose.

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

By This Method Thousands Of Humans Have Been Brought To Think That Humility Means Pretty Women Trying To Believe They Are Ugly And Clever Men Trying To Believe They Are Fools. And Since What They Are Trying To Believe May, In Some Cases, Be Manifest Nonsense, They Cannot Succeed In Believing It And We Have The Chance Of Keeping Their Minds Endlessly Revolving On Themselves In An Effort To Achieve The The Impossible.

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

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

I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.

Screwtape Letters

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

He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

We May Be Sure That The Characteristic Blindness Of The Twentieth Century [...] Lies Where We Have Never Suspected It [...] The Only Palliative Is [...] By Reading Old Books. [...] The Books Of The Future Would Be Just As Good [...], But Unfortunately We Cannot Get At Them.

For The Power Of Man To Make Himself What He Pleases Means... The Power Of Some Men To Make Other Men What They Please.

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.

They Did Nothing Wrong Their Time Here Has Ended

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

A Faith In Culture Is As Bad As A Faith In Religion; Both Expressions Imply A Turning Away From Those Very Things Which Culture And Religion Are About. Culture As A Collective Name For Certain Very Valuable Activities Is A Permissible Word; But Culture Hypostatized, Set Up On Its Own, Made Into A Faith, A Cause, A Banner, A Platform, Is Unendurable. For None Of The Activities In Question Cares A Straw For That Faith Or Cause. It Is Like A Return To Early Semitic Religion Where Names Themselves Were Regarded As Powers.

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.

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.

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

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

God Became Man To Turn Creatures Into Sons: Not Simply To Produce Better Men Of The Old Kind But To Produce A New Kind Of Man. It Is Not Like Teaching A Horse To Jump Better And Better But Like Turning A Horse Into A Winged Creature.

On Many Questions And Specially In View Of The Marriage Bed, The Puritans Were The Indulgent Party, . . . They Were Much More Chestertonian Than Their Adversaries. The Idea That A Puritan Was A Repressed And Repressive Person Would Have Astonished Sir Thomas More And Luther About Equally.

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.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point, Which Means, At The Point Of Highest Reality. A Chastity Or Honesty Or Mercy Which Yields To Danger Will Be Chaste Or Honest Or Merciful Only On Conditions. Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

It Was When I Was Happiest That I Longed Most...the Sweetest Thing In All My Life Has Been The Longing...to Find The Place Where All The Beauty Came From.

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

The Claim To Equality, Outside Of The Strictly Political Field, Is Made Only By Those Who Feel Themselves To Be In Some Way Inferior.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.

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 World Does Not Consist Of 100 Percent Christians And 100 Percent Non-christians. There Are People (a Great Many Of Them) Who Are Slowly Ceasing To Be Christians But Who Still Call Themselves By That Name: Some Of Them Are Clergymen. There Are Other People Who Are Slowly Becoming Christians Though They Do Not Yet Call Themselves So.

A Pleasure Is Full Grown Only When It Is Remembered.

Pooh! Grown-ups Are Always Thinking Of Uninteresting Explanations.

For Me, Reason Is The Natural Organ Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning. Imagination, Producing New Metaphors Or Revivifying Old, Is Not The Cause Of Truth, But Its Condition.

Dyson And Tolkien Were The Immediate Human Causes Of My Conversion. Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends By A Good Fire?

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

The True Christian's Nostril Is To Be Continually Attentive To The Inner Cesspool.

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

The New Testament Writers Speak As If Christ's Achievement In Rising From The Dead Was The First Event Of Its Kind In The Whole History Of The Universe. He Is The 'first Fruits,' The Pioneer Of Life,' He Has Forced Open A Door That Has Been Locked Since The Death Of The First Man. He Has Met, Fought, And Beaten The King Of Death. Everything Is Different Because He Has Done So.

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

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.

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

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.

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

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

The Idea Which...shuts Out The Second Coming From Our Minds, The Idea Of The World Slowly Ripening To Perfection, Is A Myth, Not A Generalization From Experience.

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

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

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

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

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.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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.

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

There Comes A Moment When People Who Have Been Dabbling In Religion ('man's Search For God'!) Suddenly Draw Back. Supposing We Really Found Him? We Never Meant It To Come To That! Worse Still, Supposing He Had Found Us?

What You See And What You Hear Depends A Great Deal On Where You Are Standing. It Also Depends On What Sort Of Person You Are.

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

The Human Qualities Of The Raw Materials Show Through. Naivety, Error, Contradiction, Even (as In The Cursing Psalms) Wickedness Are Not Removed. The Total Result Is Not "the Word Of God" In The Sense That Every Passage In Itself, Gives Impeccable Science Or History. It Carries The Word Of God.

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

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.

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

The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

I Believe Buddhism To Be A Simplification Of Hinduism And Islam To Be A Simplification Of Xianity.

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.

Christ Offers Something For Nothing: He Even Offers Everything For Nothing.

I Never Heard Weeping Like That Before Or After; Not From A Child, Nor A Man Wounded In The Palm, Nor A Tortured Man, Nor A Girl Dragged Off To Slavery From A Taken City. If You Heard The Woman You Most Hate In The World Weep So, You Would Go To Comfort Her. You Would Fight Your Way Through Fire And Spears To Reach Her. And I Knew Who Wept, And What Had Been Done To Her, And Who Had Done It.

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!

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.

Nature Does Not Teach. A True Philosophy May Sometimes Validate An Experience Of Nature; An Experience Of Nature Cannot Validate A Philosophy. Nature Will Not Verify Any Theological Or Metaphysical Proposition (or Not In The Manner We Are Now Considering); She Will Help To Show What It Means.

The Only People Who Hate Escapism Are Jailers.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.

We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.

There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditures Excludes Them.

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

It Was A Full Moon And, Shining On All The Snow, It Made Everything Almost As Bright As Day -- Only The Shadows Were Rather Confusing.

But Suppose You Struggle Through To The Good And Find That It Also Is Dreadful? How If Food Itself Turns Out To Be The Very Thing You Can't Eat, And Home The Very Place You Can't Live, And Your Very Comforter The Person Who Makes You Uncomfortable? Then, Indeed, There Is No Rescue Possible: The Last Card Has Been Played.

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.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

When The Police Arrived And Found No Lion, No Broken Wall, And No Convicts, And The Head Behaving Like A Lunatic, There Was An Inquiry Into The Whole Thing. And In The Inquiry All Sorts Of Things About Experiment House Came Out, And About Ten People Got Expelled. After That, The Head's Friends Saw That The Head Was No Use As A Head, So They Got Her Made An Inspector To Interfere With Other Heads. And When They Found She Wasn't Much Good Even At That, They Got Her Into Parliament Where She Lived Happily Ever After.

One Of The Dangers Of Having A Lot Of Money Is That You May Be Quite Satisfied With The Kinds Of Happiness Money Can Give And So Fail To Realize Your Need For God. If Everything Seems To Come Simply By Signing Checks, You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

Unless I Believe In God, I Cannot Believe In Thought: So I Can Never Use Thought To Disbelieve In God.

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.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms. Laying Down Your Arms, Surrendering, Saying You Are Sorry, Realizing That You Have Been On The Wrong Track And Getting Ready To Start Life Over Again From The Ground Floor-that Is The Only Way Out Of A "hole." This Process Of Surrender-this Movement Full Speed Astern-is Repentance.

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.

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.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It, While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him.

God Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.

Certain Things, If Not Seen As Lovely Or Detestable, Are Not Being Correctly Seen At All.

While Friendship Has Been By Far The Chief Source Of My Happiness, Acquaintance Or General Society Has Always Meant Little To Me, And I Cannot Quite Understand Why A Man Should Wish To Know More People Than He Can Make Real Friends Of.

His Face Had Become Very Red And His Mouth And Fingers Were Sticky. He Did Not Look Either Clever Or Handsome, Whatever The Queen Might Say.

Puddleglum,' They've Said, 'you're Altogether Too Full Of Bobance And Bounce And High Spirits. You've Got To Learn That Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Ell Pie. You Want Something To Sober You Down A Bit. We're Only Saying It For Your Own Good, Puddleglum.' That's What They Say. Now A Job Like This --a Journey Up North Just As Winter's Beginning Looking For A Prince That Probably Isn't There, By Way Of Ruined City Nobody's Ever Seen-- Will Be Just The Thing. If That Doesn't Steady A Chap, I Don't Know What Will.

For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.

I'd Sooner Live Among People Who Don't Cheat At Cards Than Among People Who Are Earnest About Not Cheating At Cards.

We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us; Not What Ought To Be In Us.

I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog.

Fine Feelings, New Insights, Greater Interest In ʿreligionʾ Mean Nothing Unless They Make Our Actual Behavior Better.

A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.

Screwtape Letters

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.

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.

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

How Little People Know Who Think That Holiness Is Dull... When One Meets The Real Thing, It's Irresistible!

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

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung.

There Was Nothing Medieval People Liked Better, Or Did Better, Than Sorting Out And Tidying Up. Of All Our Modern Inventions I Suspect That They Would Most Have Admired The Card Index.

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.

Jesus Christ Did Not Say, 'go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right.'

Peter, High King Of Narnia," Said Aslan. "shut The Door.

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

Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.

At Present We Are On The Outside Of The World, The Wrong Side Of The Door. We Discern The Freshness And Purity Of Morning, But They Do Not Make Us Fresh And Pure. We Cannot Mingle With The Splendours We See. But All The Leaves Of The New Testament Are Rustling With The Rumour That It Will Not Always Be So. Some Day, God Willing, We Shall Get In.

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

Individual Choice

If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.

The Christian Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us.

It Is Wonderful What You Can Do When You Have To.

The Hills And Valleys Of Heaven Will Be To Those You Now Experience Not As A Copy Is To An Original, Nor As The Substitute Is To The Genuine Article, But As The Flower To The Root, Or The Diamond To The Coal.

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

No Soul That Seriously And Constantly Desires Joy Will Ever Miss It. Those Who Seek Find. To Those Who Knock It Is Opened.

A Christian Is Not Someone Who Never Goes Wrong, But One Who Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Again, Because The Christ-life Is Inside Him.

You Asked For A Loving God: You Have One... The Consuming Fire Himself, The Love That Made The Worlds, Persistent As The Artist's Love For His Work And Despotic As A Man's Love For A Dog, Provident And Venerable As A Father's Love For A Child, Jealous, Inexorable, Exacting As Love Between The Sexes. How This Should Be, I Do Not Know: It Passes Reason To Explain Why Any Creatures, Not To Say Creatures Such As We, Should Have A Value So Prodigious In Their Creator's Eyes.

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

The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.

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.

I Prefer Being Honest To Being 'honest To God.'

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

And So For A Time It Looked As If All The Adventures Were Coming To And End; But That Was Not To Be.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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

What Can Be Better Than To Get Out A Book On Saturday Afternoon And Thrust All Mundane Considerations Away Till Next Week.

That Is The Key To History. Terrific Energy Is Expended - Civilizations Are Built Up - Excellent Institutions Devised; But Each Time Something Goes Wrong. Some Fatal Flaw Always Brings The Selfish And Cruel People To The Top, And Then It All Slides Back Into Misery And Ruin. In Fact, The Machine Conks. It Seems To Start Up All Right And Runs A Few Yards, And Then It Breaks Down.

A Concentrated Mind And A Sitting Body Make For Better Prayer Than A Kneeling Body And A Mind Half Asleep.

Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.

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

Trending Author

Michael Shannon

Calvin Coolidge

Category