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If I, Being What I Am, Can Consider That I Am In Some Sense A Christian, Why Should The Different Vices Of Those People In The Next Pew Prove That Their Religion Is Mere Hypocrisy And Convention?

-C. S. Lewis

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If I, Being What

C. S. Lewis

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If I, Being What I Am, Can Consider That I Am In Some Sense A Christian, Why Should The Different Vices Of Those People In The Next Pew Prove That Their Religion Is Mere Hypocrisy And Convention?

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It's Always Winter But It's Never Christmas.

Evil Comes From The Abuse Of Free Will

If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.

All Men Alike Stand Condemned, Not By Alien Codes Of Ethics, But By Their Own, And All Men Therefore Are Conscious Of Guilt.

We Are Not Necessarily Doubting That God Will Do The Best For Us; We Are Wondering How Painful The Best Will Turn Out To Be.

The Monstrosity Of Sexual Intercourse Outside Marriage Is That Those Who Indulge In It Are Trying To Isolate One Kind Of Union (the Sexual) From All The Other Kinds Of Union Which Were Intended To Go Along With It And Make Up The Total Union.

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

If We Discover A Desire Within Us That Nothing In This World Can Satisfy, Also We Should Begin To Wonder If Perhaps We Were Created For Another World.

Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.

When He Was A Young Man He Prayed Constantly For Chastity; But Years Later He Realized That While His Lips Had Been Saying 'oh Lord, Make Me Chaste,' His Heart Had Been Secretly Adding, 'but Please Don't Do It Just Yet.

A Dogmatic Belief In Objective Value Is Necessary To The Very Idea Of A Rule Which Is Not Tyranny Or An Obedience Which Is Not Slavery.

Sainthood Lies In The Habit Of Referring The Smallest Actions To God.

In Worship, God Imparts Himself To Us.

If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.

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

We Regard God As An Airman Regards His Parachute; It's There For Emergencies But He Hopes He'll Never Have To Use It.

Anyone Who Endeavors To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened. You Are Embarking On Something That Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.

Prayer In The Sense Of Petition, Asking For Things, Is A Small Part Of It; Confession And Penitence Are Its Threshold, Adoration Its Sanctuary, The Presence And Vision And Enjoyment Of God Its Bread And Wine.

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.

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

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

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.

The Value Of The Old Testament May Be Dependant On What Seems Its Imperfection. It May Repel One Use In Order That We May Be Forced To Use It In Another Way-to Find The Word In It...to Re-live, While We Read, The Whole Jewish Experience Of God's Gradual And Graded Self-revelation, To Feel The Very Contentions Between The Word And The Human Material Through Which It Works.

True Humility Is More Like Self-forgetfulness Than False Modesty.

The Future Is Something Which Everyone Reaches At The Rate Of 60 Minutes An Hour, Whatever He Does, Whoever He Is.

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

I Know All About The Despair Of Overcoming Chronic Temptation. It Is Not Serious, Provided Self-offended Petulance, Annoyance At Breaking Records, Impatience, Etc., Don't Get The Upper Hand. No Amount Of Falls Will Really Undo Us If We Keep Picking Ourselves Up Each Time...the Only Fatal Thing Is To Lose One's Temper And Give Up.

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.

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

We Reduce Things To Mere Nature In Order That We May "conquer" Them.

I Have No Duty To Be Anyone's Friend And No Man In The World Has A Duty To Be Mine. No Claims, No Shadow Of Necessity. Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art, Like The Universe Itself (for God Did Not Need To Create). It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things Which Give Value To Survival.

I Came Alive When I Started Loving You.

To Enter Heaven Is To Become More Human Than You Ever Succeeded In Being On Earth; To Enter Hell Is To Be Banished From Humanity. What Is Cast (or Casts Itself) Into Hell Is Not A Man: It Is 'remains.'

Not That I Am (i Think) In Much Danger Of Ceasing To Believe In God. The Real Danger Is Of Coming To Believe Such Dreadful Things About Him. The Conclusion I Dread Is Not 'so There's No God After All,' But 'so This Is What God's Really Like. Deceive Yourself No Longer.

Would It Not Be Better To Be Dead Than To Have This Horrible Fear That Aslan Has Come And Is Not Like The Aslan We Have Believed In And Longed For? It Is As If The Sun Rose One Day And Were A Black Sun.

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.

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?

Most Of All, Perhaps, We Need An Intimate Knowledge Of The Past. Not That The Past Has Anything Magical About It, But We Cannot Study The Future.

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.

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.

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

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).

I Think God Wants Us To Love Him More, Not To Love Others Less.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact.

To Be Ignorant And Simple Now-not To Be Able To Meet The Enemies On Their Own Ground-would Be To Throw Down Our Weapons And To Betray Our Uneducated Brethren Who Have, Under God, No Defense But Us Against The Intellectual Attacks Of The Heathen. Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

There Is A Kind Of Happiness And Wonder That Makes You Serious. It Is Too Good To Waste On Jokes.

Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

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

A Man Can No More Diminish God's Glory By Refusing To Worship Him Than A Lunatic Can Put Out The Sun By Scribbling The Word, 'darkness' On The Walls Of His Cell.

Most Of Us Are Not Really Approaching The Subject In Order To Find Out What Christianity Says; We Are Approaching It In The Hope Of Finding Support From Christianity For The Views Of Our Own Party.

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.

A Tyrannous And Gluttonous Demand For Affection Can Be A Horrible Thing. But In Ordinary Life No One Calls A Child Selfish Because It Turns For Comfort To Its Mother; Nor An Adult Who Turns To His Fellow "for Company." Those, Whether Children Or Adults, Who Do So Least Are Not Usually The Most Selfless.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.

But Who Can Feel Ugly, When Their Heart Feels Joy

The Only People Who Hate Escapism Are Jailers.

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work.

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

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

A Universe Whose Only Claim To Be Believed In Rests On The Validity Of Inference Must Not Start Telling Us The Inference Is Invalid.

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.

We Forgive, We Mortify Our Resentment; A Week Later Some Chain Of Thought Carries Us Back To The Original Offence And We Discover The Old Resentment Blazing Away As If Nothing Had Been Done About It At All. We Need To Forgive Our Brother Seventy Times Seven Not Only For 490 Offences But For One Offence.

Peter Did Not Feel Very Brave; Indeed, He Felt He Was Going To Be Sick. But That Made No Difference To What He Had To Do.

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.

They Say, 'the Coward Dies Many Times'; So Does The Beloved. Didn't The Eagle Find A Fresh Liver To Tear In Prometheus Every Time It Dined?

The Great Thing To Remember Is That Though Our Feelings Come And Go God's Love For Us Does Not.

Christian Inspirational

When You Are Not Feeling Particularly Friendly But Know You Ought To Be, The Best Thing You Can Do, Very Often, Is To Put On A Friendly Manner And Behave As If You Were A Nicer Person Than You Actually Are. And In A Few Minutes, As We Have All Noticed, You Will Be Really Feeling Friendlier Than You Were.

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

Mental Pain Is Less Dramatic Than Physical Pain, But It Is More Common And Also More Hard To Bear. The Frequent Attempt To Conceal Mental Pain Increases The Burden: It Is Easier To Say “my Tooth Is Aching” Than To Say “my Heart Is Broken.

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

Everyone Who Believes In God At All Believes That He Knows What You And I Are Going To Do Tomorrow.

You Must Picture Me Alone In That Room In Magdalen, Night After Night, Feeling, Whenever My Mind Lifted Even For A Second From My Work, The Steady, Unrelenting Approach Of Him Whom I So Earnestly Desired Not To Meet. That Which I Greatly Feared Had At Last Come Upon Me. In The Trinity Term Of 1929 I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.

I Daren't Come And Drink," Said Jill. Then You Will Die Of Thirst," Said The Lion. Oh Dear!" Said Jill, Coming Another Step Nearer."i Suppose I Must Go And Look For Another Stream Then." There Is No Other Stream," Said The Lion.

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

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.

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

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

The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts. The Right Defence Against False Sentiments Is To Inculcate Just Sentiments. By Starving The Sensibility Of Our Pupils We Only Make Them Easier Prey To The Propagandist When He Comes. For Famished Nature Will Be Avenged And A Hard Heart Is No Infallible Protection Against A Soft Head.

A Spoiled Saint, A Pharisee, An Inquisitor, Or A Magician, Makes Better Sport To Hell Than A Mere Common Tyrant Or Debauchee.

I Don't Want To Hold You Hand!

Walking And Talking Are Two Very Great Pleasures, But It Is A Mistake To Combine Them. Our Own Noise Blots Out The Sounds And Silences Of The Outdoor World; And Talking Leads Almost Inevitably To Smoking, And Then Farewell To Nature As Far As One Of Our Senses Is Concerned. The Only Friend To Walk With Is One Who So Exactly Shares Your Taste For Each Mood Of The Countryside That A Glance, A Halt, Or At Most A Nudge, Is Enough To Assure Us That The Pleasure Is Shared.

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Part Of Eternal Reality.

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.

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

What He Says, Even On His Knees, About His Own Sinfulness Is All Parrot Talk. At Bottom, He Still Believes He Has Run Up A Very Favorable Credit-balance In The Enemy's Ledger By Allowing Himself To Be Converted, And Thinks That He Is Showing Great Humility And Condescension In Going To Church With These 'smug', Commonplace Neighbors At All.

The Most Deeply Compelled Action Is Also The Freest Action. By That I Mean, No Part Of You Is Outside The Action.

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

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

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.

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.

But Probably Every Age Gets, Within Certain Limits, The Science It Deserves.

The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

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

Though I Do Not Believe 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.

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.

The Sweet Heavy Smell Grew Very Much Less. For Though The Whole Fire Had Not Been Put Out, A Good Bit Of It Had, And What Remained Smelled Very Largely Of Burnt Marsh-wiggle, Which Is Not At All An Enchanting Smell.

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

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

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

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.

If Things Are Real, They're There All The Time.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.

The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is To Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way.

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

Miracles Are A Retelling In Small Letters Of The Very Same Story Which Is Written Across The Whole World In Letters Too Large For Some Of Us To See.

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.

Theology Offers You A Working Arrangement, Which Leaves The Scientist Free To Continue His Experiments And The Christian To Continue His Prayers.

Death Opens A Door Out Of A Little, Dark Room (that's All The Life We Have Known Before It) Into A Great, Real Place Where The True Sun Shines And We Shall Meet.

Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.

It Now Seemed To Me That All My Other Guesses Had Been Only Self-pleasing Dreams Spun Out Of My Wishes, But Now I Was Awake.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

Many People Think Their Prayers Are Never Answered Because It Is The Answered Ones They Forget.

Post-christian Man Is Not The Same As Pre-christian Man. He Is As Far Removed As Virgin Is From Widow: There Is Nothing In Common Except Want Of A Spouse: But There Is A Great Difference Between A Spouse-to-be And A Spouse Lost.

To Interest Is The First Duty Of Art; No Other Excellences Will Ever Begin To Compensate For Failure In This.

The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start. Theories As To How It Did This Are Another Matter. A Good Many Different Theories Have Been Held As To How It Works; What All Christians Are Agreed On Is That It Does Work.

God Has Landed On This Enemy-occupied World In Human Form...the Perfect Surrender And Humiliation Was Undergone By Christ: Perfect Because He Was God, Surrender And Humiliation Because He Was Man.

Lucy Said, 'we're So Afraid Of Being Sent Away, Aslan. And You Have Sent Us Back Into Our Own World So Often.' 'no Fear Of That,' Said Aslan. 'have You Not Guessed?' Their Hearts Leapt, And A Wild Hope Rose Within Them. 'there Was A Real Railway Accident,' Said Aslan Softly. 'your Father And Mother And All Of You Are- As You Used To Call It In The Shadowlands- Dead. The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

Feelings, And Feelings, And Feelings. Let Me Try Thinking Instead.

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

Telling Us To Obey Instinct Is Like Telling Us To Obey 'people.' People Say Different Things: So Do Instincts. Our Instincts Are At War... Each Instinct, If You Listen To It, Will Claim To Be Gratified At The Expense Of The Rest.

If You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not.

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.

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.

Devils Are Depicted With Bats' Wings And Good Angels With Birds' Wings, Not Because Anyone Holds That Moral Deterioration Would Be Likely To Turn Feathers Into Membrane, But Because Most Men Like Birds Better Than Bats.

I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.

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

Man Does Not Have A Soul. He Is A Soul. He Has A Body.

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

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

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

Only The Skilled Can Judge The Skillfulness, But That Is Not The Same As Judging The Value Of The Result.

Enemy-occupied Territory---that Is What This World Is. Christianity Is The Story Of How The Rightful King Has Landed, You Might Say Landed In Disguise, And Is Calling Us To Take Part In A Great Campaign Of Sabotage.

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

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

You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.

Put First Things First

First Things First

The Question Is Not What We Intended Ourselves To Be, But What He Intended Us To Be When He Made Us.

It Is Safe To Tell The Pure In Heart That They Shall See God, For Only The Pure In Heart Want To.

In Order That We Finite Beings May Apprehend The Emporer He Translates His Glory Into Multiple Forms - Into Stars, Woods, Waters, Beasts, And The Bodies Of Men.

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

For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex

It Takes All Sorts To Make A World; Or A Church. This May Be Even Truer Of A Church. If Grace Perfects Nature It Must Expand All Our Natures Into The Full Richness Of The Diversity Which God Intended When He Made Them, And Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering, Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

If You Haven't Met Satan Recently, You Are Probably Going His Way!

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

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

When We Are Lost In The Woods, The Sight Of A Signpost Is A Great Matter.

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

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?

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

I Know Now, Lord, Why You Utter No Answer. You Are Yourself The Answer. Before Your Face Questions Die Away. What Other Answer Would Suffice?

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

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy.

Obedience Is The Key That Opens Every Door.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

Mortal Lovers Must Not Try To Remain At The First Step; For Lasting Passion Is The Dream Of A Harlot And From It We Wake In Despair.

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

Hatred Obscures All Distinctions.

And That's Why, When They Want To Get Rid Of Anyone, They Usually Bring Him Down Here (like They Were Doing With Me) And Say They'll Leave Him To The Ghosts. But I Always Wondered If They Didn't Really Drown 'em Or Cut Their Throats. I Never Quite Believed In The Ghosts. But Those Two Cowards You've Just Shot Believed All Right. They Were More Scared Of Taking Me To My Death Than I Was Of Going.

We May Give Our Human Loves The Unconditional Allegiance Which We Owe Only To God. They They Become Gods: Then They Become Demons. Then They Will Destroy Us, And Also Destroy Themselves. For Natural Loves That Are Allowed To Become Gods Do Not Remain Loves. They Are Still Called So, But Can Become In Fact Complicated Forms Of Hatred.

The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him And To Each Other In An Ecstasy Of Love And Delight Compared With Which The Most Rapturous Love Between A Man And A Woman On This Earth Is Mere Milk And Water. And For That They Must Be Free.

We Have On The One Hand A Desperate Need; Hunger, Sickness, And The Dread Of War. We Have, On The Other, The Conception Of Something That Might Meet It: Omnicompetent Global Technocracy. Are Not These The Ideal Opportunity For Enslavement? This Is How It Has Entered Before; A Desperate Need (real Or Apparent) In The One Party, A Power (real Or Apparent) To Relieve It, In The Other.

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.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

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

An Open Mind, In Questions That Are Not Ultimate, Is Useful. But An Open Mind About The Ultimate Foundations Either Of Theoretical Or Of Practical Reason Is Idiocy. If A Man's Mind Is Open On These Things, Let His Mouth At Least Be Shut. He Can Say Nothing To The Purpose. Outside The Tao There Is No Ground For Criticizing Either The Tao Or Anything Else.

The More We Get What We Now Call 'ourselves' Out Of The Way And Let Him Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become.

I Have Been Feeling Very Much Lately That Cheerful Insecurity Is What Our Lord Asks Of Us.

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

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

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

When Pain Is To Be Born, A Little Courage Helps More Than Much Knowledge, A Little Human Sympathy More Than Much Courage, And The Least Tincture Of The Love Of God More Than All.

A Blessed Spirit Is A Mould Ever More And More Patient Of The Bright Metal Poured Into It, A Body Ever More Completely Uncovered To The Meridian Blaze Of The Spiritual Sun.

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

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.

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

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

The Greatest Evils In The World Will Not Be Carried Out By Men With Guns, But By Men In Suits Sitting Behind Desks

Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal.

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.

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

Talk To Me About The Truth Of Religion And I'll Listen Gladly. Talk To Me About The Duty Of Religion And I'll Listen Submissively. But Don't Come Talking To Me About The Consolations Of Religion Or I Shall Suspect That You Don't Understand.

Well, Sir, If Things Are Real, They’re There All The Time." "are They?" Said The Professor; And Peter Did Not Quite Know What To Say.

It Is Often Little Things That Are Hardest To Stand.

We Know We Are Sinners, It Does Not Follow That We Are Saved.

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

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness. We Need Others Physically, Emotionally, And Intellectually. We Need Them If We Are To Know Anything, Even Ourselves.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You "love" Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did.

Golly,' Said Edmund Under His Breath, 'he's A Retired Star.

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

The Very Lack Of Evidence Is Thus Treated As Evidence; The Absence Of Smoke Proves That The Fire Is Very Carefully Hidden...a Belief In Invisible Cats Cannot Be Logically Disproved Although It Does Tell Us A Good Deal About Those Who Hold It.

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs. There Is Not One Of Them Which Will Not Make Us Into Devils If We Set It Up As An Absolute Guide. You Might Think Love Of Humanity In General Was Safe, But It Is Not. If You Leave Out Justice You Will Find Yourself Breaking Agreements And Faking Evidence In Trials "for The Sake Of Humanity", And Become In The End A Cruel And Treacherous Man.

For Every One Pupil Who Needs To Be Guarded Against A Weak Excess Of Sensibility There Are Three Who Need To Be Awakened From The Slumber Of Cold Vulgarity. The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts.

The Books Or The Music In Which We Thought The Beauty Was Located Will Betray Us If We Trust To Them; It Was Not In Them, It Only Came Through Them,and What Came Through Them Was Longing. These Things—the Beauty, The Memory Of Our Own Past—are Good Images Of What We Really Desire; But If They Are Mistaken For The Thing Itself They Turn Into Dumb Idols,breaking The Hearts Of Their Worshippers. For They Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

The Most Precious Gift That Marriage Gave Me Was The Constant Impact Of Something Very Close And Intimate, Yet All The Time Unmistakably Other, Resistant - In A Word, Real.

If The Universe Is So Bad...how On Earth Did Human Beings Ever Come To Attribute It To The Activity Of A Wise And Good Creator?

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Karl Liebknecht

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