Background Image

...

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

If God 'foresaw' Our

C. S. Lewis

...

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

Views: 8

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

If There's Anyone Who Can Appear Before Aslan Without Their Knees Knocking, They're Either Braver Than Most, Or Else Just Silly.

Every Story Of Conversion Is The Story Of A Blessed Defeat.

Surely You Know That If A Man Can't Be Cured Of Churchgoing, The Next Best Thing Is To Send Him All Over The Neighbourhood Looking For The Church That "suits" Him Until He Becomes A Taster Or Connoisseur Of Churches.

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

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

There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.

A Man May Have To Die For Our Country: But No Man Must, In Any Exclusive Sense, Live For His Country. He Who Surrenders Himself Without Reservation To The Temporal Claims Of A Nation, Or A Party, Or A Class Is Rendering To Caesar That Which, Of All Things, Most Emphatically Belongs To God: Himself.

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

Screwtape Letters

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

Thus The Criminal Ceases To Be A Person, A Subject Of Rights And Duties, And Becomes Merely An Object On Which Society Can Work. And This Is, In Principle, How Hitler Treated The Jews. They Were Objects; Killed Not For Ill Desert But Because, On His Theories, They Were A Disease In Society. If Society Can Mend, Remake, And Unmake Men At Its Pleasure, Its Pleasure May, Of Course, Be Humane Or Homicidal. The Difference Is Important. But, Either Way, Rulers Have Become Owners.

The More Often He Feels Without Acting, The Less He Will Be Able Ever To Act, And, In The Long Run, The Less He Will Be Able To Feel.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'

I Have Discovered That The People Who Believe Most Strongly In The Next Life Do The Most Good In The Present One.

There Are No Variations Except For Those Who Know A Norm, And No Subtleties For Those Who Have Not Grasped The Obvious.

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.

Christianity Asserts That Every Individual Human Being Is Going To Live For Ever, And This Must Be Either True Or False. Now There Are A Good Many Things Which Would Not Be Worth Bothering About If I Were Going To Live Only Seventy Years, But Which I Had Better Bother About Very Seriously If I Am Going To Live For Ever.

I Never See Why We Should Do Anything Unless It Is Either A Duty Or A Pleasure! Life's Short Enough Without Filling Up Hours Unnecessarily

We Can Rest Contentedly In Our Sins And In Our Stupidities, And Anyone Who Has Watched Gluttons Shoveling Down The Most Exquisite Foods As If They Did Not Know What They Were Eating Will Admit That We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Consciences, But Shouts In Our Pains. It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

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.

The Scotch Catechism Says That Man's Chief End Is 'to Glorify God And Enjoy Him Forever.' But We Shall Then Know That These Are The Same Thing. Fully To Enjoy Is To Glorify. In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

The Future Is, Of All Things, The Thing Least Like Eternity. It Is The Most Temporal Part Of Time--for The Past Is Frozen And No Longer Flows, And The Present Is All Lit Up With Eternal Rays.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable.

Christ, Who Said To The Disciples, 'you Have Not Chosen Me, But I Have Chosen You,' Can Truly Say To Every Group Of Christian Friends, 'you Have Not Chosen One Another But I Have Chosen You For One Another.'

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.

No Good Poem, However Confessional It May Be, Is Just A Self-expression. Who On Earth Would Claim That The Pearl Expresses The Oyster?

And He [god] And You Are Two Things Of Such A Kind That If You Really Get Into Any Kind Of Touch With Him You Will, In Fact, Be Humble--delightedly Humble, Feeling The Infinite Relief Of Having For Once Got Rid Of All The Silly Nonsense About Your Own Dignity Which Has Made You Restless And Unhappy All Your Life.

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

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

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

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.

We Who Have Been True Readers All Our Life Fully Realize The Enormous Of Our Being Which We Owe To Authors.

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 Was Wondering — I Mean — Could There Be Some Mistake? Because Nobody Called Me And Scrubb, You Know. It Was We Who Asked To Come Here. You Would Not Have Called Me Unless I Had Been Calling You.

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

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.

Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.

Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.

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.

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

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

Giant Wimbleweather Burst Into One Of Those Not Very Intelligent Laughs To Which The Nicer Sort Of Giants Are So Liable. He Checked Himself At Once And Looked As Grace As A Turnip By The Time Reepicheep Discovered Where The Noise Came From.

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

Christ Did Not Die For Man Because They Were Intrinsically Worth Dying For, But Because He Is Intrinsically Love, And Therefore Loves Infinitely.

Knock And It Shall Be Opened.' But Does Knocking Mean Hammering And Kicking The Door Like A Maniac?

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

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

We Don't Have A Soul. We Are A Soul. We Happen To Have A Body.

If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.

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.

The Very Condition Of Having Friends Is That We Should Want Something Else Besides Friends. Where The Truthful Answer To The Question "do You See The Same Truth?" Would Be "i See Nothing And I Don't Care About The Truth; I Only Want A Friend," No Friendship Can Arise - Though Affection Of Course May. There Would Be Nothing For The Friendship To Be About; And Friendship Must Be About Something, Even If It Were Only An Enthusiasm For Dominoes Or White Mice. Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.

The Descent To Hell Is Easy And Those Who Begin By Worshipping Power, Soon Worship Evil.

Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

Once A King In Narnia, Always A King In Narnia. But Don't Go Trying To Use The Same Route Twice. Indeed, Don't Try To Get There At All. It'll Happen When You're Not Looking For It. And Don't Talk Too Much About It Even Among Yourselves. And Don't Mention It To Anyone Else Unless You Find That They've Had Adventures Of The Same Sort Themselves. What's That? How Will You Know? Oh, You'll Know All Right. Odd Things, They Say-even Their Looks-will Let The Secret Out. Keep Your Eyes Open. Bless Me, What Do They Teach Them At These Schools." -the Profesor

This World Is A Great Sculptor's Shop. We Are The Statues And There Is A Rumor Going Round The Shop That Some Of Us Are Some Day Going To Come To Life.

He Liked Books If They Were Books Of Information And Had Pictures Of Grain Elevators Or Of Fat Foreign Children Doing Exercises In Model Schools.

Every Time You Make A Choice You Are Turning The Central Part Of You, The Part Of You That Chooses, Into Something A Little Different From What It Was Before. And Taking Your Life As A Whole, With All Your Innumerable Choices, All Your Life Long You Are Slowly Turning This Central Thing Either Into A Heavenly Creature Or Into A Hellish Creature...

Without Sin, The Universe Is A Solemn Game: And There Is No Good Game Without Rules.

Lucy Looked And Saw That Aslan Had Just Breathed On The Feet Of The Stone Giant. It's All Right!" Shouted Aslan Joyously. "once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

It Is Quite Useless Knocking At The Door Of Heaven For Earthly Comfort. It's Not The Sort Of Comfort They Supply There.

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

[the Decay Of Logic Results From An] Untroubled Assumption That The Particular Is Real And The Universal Is Not.

I See People, As They Approach Me, Trying To Make Up Their Minds Whether They'll 'say Something About It' Or Not. I Hate If They Do, And If They Don't.

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

Something Of God... Flows Into Us From The Blue Of The Sky, The Taste Of Honey, The Delicious Embrace Of Water Whether Cold Or Hot, And Even From Sleep Itself.

If We Really Think That Home Is Elsewhere And That This Life Is A Wandering To Find Home, Why Should We Not Look Forward To The Arrival?

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

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

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

Christianity Does Not Involve The Belief That All Things Were Made For Man. It Does Involve The Belief That God Loves Man And For His Sake Became Man And Died.

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.

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

Those Who Torment Us For Our Own Good Will Torment Us Without End, For They Do So With The Approval Of Their Own Conscience.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

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

We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us.

Love Is More Than An Emotion, It Is A Decision.

We Have Not, In Fact, Proved That Science Excludes Miracles: We Have Only Proved That The Question Of Miracles, Like Innumerable Other Questions, Excludes Laboratory Treatment.

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

You Had Nothing To Say About It And Yet Made The Nothing Up Into Words.

I Never Fully Understood It Till My Friend Professor Tolkien Asked Me The Very Simple Question, 'what Class Of Men Would You Expect To Be Most Preoccupied With, And Hostile To, The Idea Of Escape?' And Gave The Obvious Answer: Jailers.

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

The Real Test Of Being In The Presence Of God Is, That You Either Forget About Yourself Altogether Or See Yourself As A Small, Dirty Object.

Aslan's Instructions Always Work; There Are No Exceptions.

I Have Discovered, Passionate Grief Does Not Link Us With The Dead But Cuts Us Off From Them. This Becomes Clearer And Clearer. It Is Just At Those Moments When I Feel Least Sorrow - Getting Into My Morning Bath Is Usually One Of Them - That H. Rushes Upon My Mind In Her Full Reality, Her Otherness. Not, As In My Worst Moments, All Foreshortened And Patheticized And Solemnized By My Miseries, But As She Is In Her Own Right. This Is Good And Tonic.

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

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

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.

Never Forget That When We Are Dealing With Any Pleasure In Its Healthy And Normal And Satisfying Form, We Are, In A Sense, On The Enemy’s (god’s) Ground…he [god] Made The Pleasure: All Our Research So Far Has Not Enabled Us To Produce One. All We Can Do Is To Encourage The Humans To Take The Pleasures Which Our Enemy [god] Has Produced, At At Times, Or In Ways, Or In Degrees, Which He [god] Has Forbidden.

But What Manner Of Use Would It Be Ploughing Through That Darkness?' Asked Drinian. Use?' Replied Reepicheep. 'use, Captain?' If You Mean By Filling Our Bellies Or Our Purses, I Confess It Will Be No Use At All. So Far As I Know We Did Not Set Sail To Look For Things Useful But To Seek Honour And Adventures. And Here Is As Great An Adventure As I Have Ever Heard Of, And Here, If We Turn Back, No Little Impeachment Of All Our Honours.

We Do Not Come To God As Bad People Trying To Become Good People; We Come As Rebels To Lay Down Our Arms.

The Next Moment Is As Much Beyond Our Grasp, And As Much In God's Care, As That A Hundred Years Away. Care For The Next Minute Is As Foolish As Care For A Day In The Next Thousand Years. In Neither Can We Do Anything, In Both God Is Doing Everything.

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

Last Year, When He Had Been Staying With The Pevensies, He Had Managed To Hear Them All Talking Of Narnia And He Loved Teasing Them About It. He Thought Of Course That They Were Making It All Up; And As He Was Far Too Stupid To Make Anything Up Himself, He Did Not Approve Of That.

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.

When The Most Important Things In Our Life Happen We Quite Often Do Not Know, At The Moment, What Is Going On.

She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.

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

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

Though No One Would Want To Be Sold As A Slave, It Is Perhaps Even More Galling To Be A Sort Of Utility Slave Whom No One Will Buy.

It Will Not Bother Me In The Hour Of Death To Reflect That I Have Been "had For A Sucker" By Any Number Of Imposters But It Would Be A Torment To Know That One Had Refused Even One Person In Need.

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

Every Object You See Before You At This Moment -the Walls, Ceiling, And Furniture, The Book, Your Own Washed Hands And Cut Fingernails, Bears Witness To The Colonization Of Nature Of Reason.

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.

Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

I Begin To Suspect That The World Is Divided Not Only Into The Happy And The Unhappy, But Into Those Who Like Happiness And Those Who, Odd As It Seems, Really Don't.

A Sick Society Must Think Much About Politics, As A Sick Man Must Think Much About His Digestion.

If You Make The Same Guess Often Enough It Ceases To Be A Guess And Becomes A Scientific Fact. This Is The Inductive Method.

But All Night, Aslan And The Moon Gazed Upon Each Other With Joyful And Unblinking Eyes.

Alas," Said Aslan, Shaking His Head. "it Will. Things Always Work According To Their Nature. She Has Won Her Heart's Desire; She Has Unwearying Strength And Endless Days Like A Goddess. But Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery And Already She Begins To Know It. All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

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

In Those Days Mr. Sherlock Holmes Was Still Living In Baker Street And The Bastables Were Looking For Treasure In The Lewisham Road.

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.

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

The Problem Of Reconciling Human Suffering With The Existence Of A God Who Loves, Is Only Insoluble So Long As We Attach A Trivial Meaning To The Word "love", And Look On Things As If Man Were The Centre Of Them. Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake. "thou Hast Created All Things, And For Thy Pleasure They Are And Were Created." We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God (though We Were Made For That Too) But That God May Love Us, That We May Become Objects In Which The Divine Love May Rest "well Pleased".

I Came Alive When I Started Loving You.

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.

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

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

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

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven. Our Merriment Must Be Between People Who Take Each Other Seriously.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin.

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

Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

It's No Use Telling Us That Something Was 'mysterious' Or 'loathsome' Or 'awe-inspiring' Or 'voluptuous.' By Direct Description, By Metaphor And Simile, By Secretly Evoking Powerful Associations, By Offering The Right Stimuli To Our Nerves (in The Right Degree And The Right Order), And By The Very Beat And Vowel-melody And Length And Brevity Of Your Sentences, You Must Bring It About That We, We Readers, Not You, Exclaim, 'how Mysterious!' Or 'loathsome' Or Whatever It Is. Let Me Taste For Myself, And You'll Have No Need To Tell Me How I Should React.

You Cannot Study Pleasure In The Moment Of The Nuptial Embrace, Nor Repentance While Repenting, Nor Analyze The Nature Of Humour While Roaring With Laughter.

Looking For God-or Heaven-by Exploring Space Is Like Reading Or Seeing All Shakespeare's Plays In The Hope That You Will Find Shakespeare As One Of The Characters.

Until You Have Given Up Yourself To Him, You Will Not Have A Real Self.

But Do You Really Mean, Sir," Said Peter, "that There Could Be Other Worlds-all Over The Place, Just Round The Corner-like That?" "nothing Is More Probable," Said The Profesor, Taking Off His Spectacles And Beginning To Polish Them, While He Muttered To Himself, "i Wonder What They Do Teach Them At These Schools.

Where I Come From, They Don't Think Much Of Men Who Are Bossed About By Their Wives.

Hail Lord, ...loose My Chains.

Since It Is So Likely That (children) Will Meet Cruel Enemies, Let Them At Least Have Heard Of Brave Knights And Heroic Courage. Otherwise You Are Making Their Destiny Not Brighter But Darker.

Do I Think Well Of Myself, Think Myself A Nice Chap? Well, I Am Afraid I Sometimes Do (and Those Are, No Doubt, My Worst Moments).

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

This Is A Book About Something

Our Temptation Is To Look Eagerly For The Minimum That Will Be Accepted. We Are In Fact Very Like Honest But Reluctant Taxpayers.

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 They Are Wrong They Need Your Prayers All The More; And If They Are Your Enemies, Then You Are Under Orders To Pray For Them. That Is One Of The Rules Common To The Whole House.

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

First Be Sure That You Know Exactly What You Want To Say. Then Be Sure You Have Said Exactly That.

The Castle Of Cair Paravel On Its Little Hill Towered Up Above Them; Before Them Were The Sands, With Rocks And Little Pools Of Salt Water, And Seaweed, And The Smell Of The Sea And Long Miles Of Bluish-green Waves Breaking For Ever And Ever On The Beach. And Oh, The Cry Of The Seagulls! Have You Ever Heard It? Can You Remember?

Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said.

You People Have No Imagination!

Our Souls Demand Purgatory, Don't They? Would It Not Break The Heart If God Said To Us, It Is True, My Son, That Your Breath Smells And Your Rags Drip With Mud And Slime, But We Are Charitable Here And No One Will Upbraid You With These Things, Nor Draw Away From You. Enter Into Joy? Should We Not Reply, With Submission, Sir, And If There Is No Objection, I'd Rather Be Cleansed First. It May Hurt, You Know-even So, Sir.

Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

Christianity Tells People To Repent And Promises Them Forgiveness. It Therefore Has Nothing (as Far As I Know) To Say To People Who Do Not Know They Have Done Anything To Repent Of And Who Do Not Feel That They Need Forgiveness.

What We Called Love Down There Was Mostly The Craving To Be Loved. In The Main I Loved You For My Own Sake: Because I Needed You...we Shall Have No Need For One Another Now: We Can Begin To Love Truly.

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

The Cross Comes Before The Crown And Tomorrow Is A Monday Morning!

The Great Thing, If One Can, Is To Stop Regarding All The Unpleasant Things As Interruptions Of One's 'own,' Or 'real' Life. The Truth Is Of Course That What One Calls The Interruptions Are Precisely One's Real Life -- The Life God Is Sending One Day By Day.

Art Can Teach Without At All Ceasing To Be Art.

For Jokes As Well As Justice Come In With Speech.

Man, Even Now, Can Do Wonders To Animals: My Cat And Dog Live Together In My House And Seem To Like It. It May Have Been One Of Man's Functions To Restore Peace To The Animal World, And If He Had Not Joined The Enemy He Might Have Succeeded In Doing So To An Extent Now Hardly Imaginable.

When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?

A Thing May Be Morally Neutral And Yet The Desire For That Thing May Be Dangerous.

That Raises A Terrible Question. How Is It That People Who Are Quite Obviously Eaten Up With Pride Can Say They Believe In God And Appear To Themselves Very Religious? I Am Afraid It Means They Are Worshiping An Imaginary God.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

Emeth Speaking Of Aslan, "beloved, Said The Glorious One, Unless Thy Desire Had Been For Me Thou Wouldst Not Have Sought So Long And So Truly. For All Find What They Truly Seek...and Since Then, O Kings And Ladies, 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

Remember, He Is Not, Like You, A Pure Spirit. Never Having Been A Human (oh That Abominable Advantage Of The Enemy's) You Don't Realize How Enslaved They Are To The Pressure Of The Ordinary.

I Cannot Understand How A Man Can Appear In Print Claiming To Disbelieve Everything That He Presupposes When He Puts On The Surplice. I Feel It Is A Form Of Prostitution.

Our Heavenly Father Has Provided Many Delightful Inns For Us Along Our Journey, But He Takes Great Care To See That We Do Not Mistake Any Of Them For Home.

They Did Nothing Wrong Their Time Here Has Ended

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

All These Toys Were Never Intended To Possess My Heart. My True Good Is In Another World, And My Only Real Treasure Is Christ.

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

I Have Seen Landscapes . . . Which, Under A Particular Light, Make Me Feel That At Any Moment A Giant Might Raise His Head Over The Next Ridge.

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."

I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait.

Fools!" Said The Man, Stamping His Foot With Rage. "that Is The Sort Of Talk That Brought Me Here, And I'd Better Have Been Drowned Or Never Born. Do You Hear What I Say? This Is Where Dreams — Dreams, Do You Understand — Come To Life, Come Real. Not Daydreams: Dreams.

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.

When We See The Face Of God We Shall Know That We Have Always Known It. He Has Been A Party To, Has Made, Sustained And Moved Moment By Moment Within, All Our Earthly Experiences Of Innocent Love.

God, Who Needs Nothing, Loves Into Existence Wholly Superfluous Creatures In Order That He May Love And Perfect Them.

It Is Not Your Business To Succeed, But To Do Right. When You Have Done So The Rest Lies With God.

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

You Can't Just Go On Being A Good Egg. You Must Either Hatch Or Go Bad!

The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

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

The Desire For Bad Art Is The Desire Bred Of Habit: Like The Smoker's Desire For Tobacco, More Marked By The Extreme Malaise Of Denial Than By Any Very Strong Delight In Fruition.

And There, Right In The Middle Of It, I Find 'forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive Those That Sin Against Us.' There Is No Slightest Suggestion That We Are Offered Forgiveness On Any Other Terms. It Is Made Perfectly Clear That If We Do Not Forgive We Shall Not Be Forgiven.

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

The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. Our Charities Should Pinch And Hamper Us. If We Live At The Same Level Of Affluence As Other People Who Have Our Level Of Income, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little.

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.

Some People Write Heavily, Some Write Lightly. I Prefer The Light Approach Because I Believe There Is A Great Deal Of False Reverence About. There Is Too Much Solemnity And Intensity In Dealing With Sacred Matters; Too Much Speaking In Holy Tones.

Has This World Been So Kind To You That You Should Leave With Regret? There Are Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

Prostitutes Are In No Danger Of Finding Their Present Life So Satisfactory That They Cannot Turn To God: The Proud, The Avaricious, The Self-righteous, Are In That Danger.

And 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. But Things That Many See May Have No Taste Or Moment In Them At All, And Things That Are Shown Only To One May Be Spears And Water-spouts Of Truth From The Very Depth Of Truth.

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

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

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

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.

...this New Idea Of Cure Instead Of Punishment, So Humane In Seeming, Had In Fact Deprived The Criminal Of All Rights And By Taking Away The Name Punishment Made The Thing Infinite.

If Conversion To Christianity Makes No Improvement In A Man's Outward Actions – If He Continues To Be Just A Snobbish Or Spiteful Or Envious Or Ambitious As He Was Before – Then I Think We Must Suspect That His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

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.

The Value Given To The Testimony Of Any Feeling Must Depend On Our Whole Philosophy, Not Our Whole Philosophy On A Feeling.

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

We Must Sometimes Get Away From The Authorized Version, If For No Other Reason, Simply Because It Is So Beautiful And So Solemn. Beauty Exalts, But Beauty Also Lulls. Early Associations Endear, But They Also Confuse. Through That Beautiful Solemnity, The Transporting Or Horrifying Realities Of Which The Book Tells May Come To Us Blunted And Disarmed, And We May Only Sigh With Tranquil Veneration When We Ought To Be Burning With Shame, Or Struck Dumb With Terror, Or Carried Out Of Ourselves By Ravishing Hopes And Adorations.

Never, Never Pin Your Whole Faith On Any Human Being: Not If He Is The Best And Wisest In The Whole World. There Are Lots Of Nice Things You Can Do With Sand; But Do Not Try Building A House On It.

Not To Be, But To Seem, Virtuous - It Is A Formula Whose Utility We All Discovered In The Nursery.

Trending Author

Juan Manuel Santos

Paul Feyerabend

Category