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Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.
-C. S. Lewis
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Imagine A Set Of

C. S. Lewis
Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.
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Reading
Woods
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Child, That Is Why All The Rest Are Now A Horror To Her. That Is What Happens To Those Who Pluck And Eat Fruits At The Wrong Time And In The Wrong Way. Oh, The Fruit Is Good, But They Loath It Ever After.
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Nephew
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Sides
Narnia
The Sight Of The Huge World Put Mad Ideas Into Me, As If I Could Wander Away, Wander Forever, See Strange And Beautiful Things, One After The Other...
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Sight
Ideas
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Atheist
Cutting
Atheism
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Pleasure
Pain And Pleasure
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Christ
Offers
When You Give Up A Bit Of Work Don't (unless It Is Hopelessly Bad) Throw It Away. Put It In A Drawer. It May Come In Useful Later. Much Of My Best Work, Or What I Think My Best, Is The Re-writing Of Things Begun And Abandoned Years Earlier.
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Writing
Thinking
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Would Be
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Cheating
Hurt
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Law
Miracle
Facts
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Hate
Believe
Hatred
But I Remember More Dearly Autumn Afternoons In Bottoms That Lay Intensely Silent Under Old Great Trees
Autumn
Tree
Afternoon
Selfishness Has Never Been Admired.
Selfishness
Death And Resurrection Are What The Story Is About And Had We But Eyes To See It, This Has Been Hinted On Every Page, Met Us, In Some Disguise, At Every Turn, And Even Been Muttered In Conversations Between Such Minor Characters (if They Are Minor Characters) As The Vegetables.
Character
Eye
Vegetables
A Moderately Bad Man Knows He Is Not Very Good: A Thoroughly Bad Man Thinks He Is Alright. This Is Common Sense Really. You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not Well You Are Sleeping.
Sleep
Men
Thinking
Grief Is Like A Bomber Circling Round And Dropping Its Bombs Each Time The Circle Brings It Overhead; Physical Pain Is Like The Steady Barrage On A Trench In World War One, Hours If It With No Let-up For A Moment. Thought Is Never Static Pain Often Is... Is It Not Yet Enough?
Pain
War
Grief
It Is Important Early In Life To Acquire The Power Of Reading Sense Wherever You Happen To Be.
Reading
Important
Happens
The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.
Beautiful
Life Is
Beauty Of Life
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.
Forgiving
Suggestions
Sin
All I Am In Private Life Is A Literary Critic And Historian, That's My Job...and I'm Prepared To Say On That Basis If Anyone Thinks The Gospels Are Either Legends Or Novels, Then That Person Is Simply Showing His Incompetence As A Literary Critic. I've Read A Great Many Novels And I Know A Fair Amount About The Legends That Grew Up Among Early People, And I Know Perfectly Well The Gospels Are Not That Kind Of Stuff.
Bible
Jobs
Thinking
Look For The Valleys, The Green Places, And Fly Through Them. There Will Always Be A Way Through.
Valleys
Looks
Green
Grief. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.
Pain
Grief
Losing Everything
Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.
Animal
Emotion
Aids
I Hope No One Who Reads This Book Has Been Quite As Miserable As Susan And Lucy Were That Night; But If You Have Been - If You've Been Up All Night And Cried Till You Have No More Tears Left In You - You Will Know That There Comes In The End A Sort Of Quietness. You Feel As If Nothing Is Ever Going To Happen Again.
Goodbye
Book
Night
If They Embark On This Course The Difference Between The Old And The New Education Will Be An Important One. Where The Old Initiated, The New Merely 'conditions'. The Old Dealt With Its Pupils As Grown Birds Deal With Young Birds When They Teach Them To Fly; The New Deals With Them More As The Poultry-keeper Deals With Young Birds- Making Them Thus Or Thus For Purposes Of Which The Birds Know Nothing. In A Word, The Old Was A Kind Of Propagation-men Transmitting Manhood To Men; The New Is Merely Propaganda.
Educational
Men
Differences
Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.
Friendship
Personality
Catholic
Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."
Love
Friendship
Inspiration
Few Men Looked On Her Without Becoming, In A Certain Fashion, Her Lovers. But It Was The Kind Of Love That Made Them Not Less True, But Truer, To Their Own Wives.
Fashion
Men
Wife
To Be Religious Is To Have One's Attention Fixed On God And On One's Neighbour In Relation To God.
Religious
Religion
Attention
And That's Why, Gentleman, If Your Little Girl Doesn't Come Up To Scratch, It Will Be Our Painful Duty To Cut All Your Throats. Merely In A Way Of Business, As You Might Say, And No Offense, I Hope.
Girl
Cutting
Gentleman
Please Will You Do My Job For Me.
Jobs
Please
God Has Infinite Attention To Spare For Each One Of Us.
Attention
Infinite
Spares
I Don't Want To Hold You Hand!
Hands
Want
I Would Prefer To Battle The 'i'm Special' Feeling Not By The Thought, 'i'm No More Special Than Anyone Else,' By By The Feeling, 'everyone Is As Special As Me.'
Feelings
Special
Battle
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.
Life
Grief
Sadness
Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.
Mother
Reality
Important
Everything Is As Good Or Bad As Our Opinion Makes It.
Opinion
If We Cut Up Beasts Simply Because They Cannot Prevent Us And Because We Are Backing Our Own Side In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only Logical To Cut Up Imbeciles, Criminals, Enemies, Or Capitalists For The Same Reasons.
Wisdom
Struggle
Cutting
You Ask Whether I Have Ever Been In Love: Fool As I Am, I Am Not Such A Fool As That. But If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business. But Though I Have No Personal Experience Of The Things They Call Love, I Have What Is Better - The Experience Of Sappho, Of Euripides, Of Catallus, Of Shakespeare, Of Spenser, Of Austen, Of Bronte, Of Anyone Else I Have Read.
Love
Dream
Business
One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.
Christian
Giving Up
Taken
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. His Increasing Reputation, His Widening Circle Of Acquaintances, His Sense Of Importance, The Growing Pressure Of Absorbing And Agreeable Work Build Up In Him A Sense Of Being Really At Home On Earth Which Is Just What We Want.
Home
Men
Circles
If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.
Kindness
Records
Definitions
In Justifying Cruelty To Animals We Put Ourselves Also On The Animal Level. We Choose The Jungle And Must Abide By Our Choice.
Animal
Choices
Pet
Your Patient Has Become Humble; Have You Drawn His Attention To The Fact? All Virtues Are Less Formidable To Us Once The Man Is Aware That He Has Them, But This Is Specially True Of Humility.
Humble
Humility
Pride
As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.
Humility
Sin Of Pride
Long
A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.
Art
Men
Helping
I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.
Book
Endless
Products
I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.
Book
Writing
Made
We Delight To Praise What We Enjoy Because The Praise Not Merely Expresses But Completes The Enjoyment; It Is Its Appointed Consummation. It Is Not Out Of Compliment That Lovers Keep On Telling One Another How Beautiful They Are; The Delight Is Incomplete Till It Is Expressed.
Beautiful
Delight
Lovers
If You Examined A Hundred People Who Had Lost Their Faith In Christianity, I Wonder How Many Of Them Would Turn Out To Have Reasoned Out Of It By Honest Argument? Do Not Most People Simply Drift Away?
Religious
People
Honest
An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.
Book
Men
Rereading
Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.
Lying
Made
Knows
Naturally, Since I Myself Am A Writer, I Do Not Wish The Ordinary Reader To Read No Modern Books. But If He Must Read Only The New Or Only The Old, I Would Advise Him To Read The Old.
Book
Wish
Ordinary
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.
Inspirational
Religious
Needs
So That The One Road For Which We Now Need God's Leadership Most Of All Is A Road God, In His Own Nature, Has Never Walked. But Suppose God Became A Man... He Could Surrender His Will, Suffer And Die, Because He Was A Man.
Men
Suffering
Needs
Human Culture Has Always Had To Exist Under The Shadow Of Something Infinitely More Important Than Itself. If Men Had Postponed The Search For Knowledge And Beauty Until They Were Secure, The Search Would Never Have Begun.
Men
Shadow
Important
We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.
Real
Miracle
Christianity
Because We Love Something Else More Than This World, We Love Even This World More Than Those Who Know No Other.
World
This World
Knows
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.
Believe
Giving
Safe
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.
Children
Destiny
Knights
We 'have All We Want' Is A Terrible Saying When 'all' Does Not Include God. We Find God An Interruption. As St. Augustine Says Somewhere, 'god Wants To Give Us Something, But Cannot, Because Our Hands Are Full - There's Nowhere For Him To Put It.'
Hands
Giving
Doe
Without Sin, The Universe Is A Solemn Game: And There Is No Good Game Without Rules.
Games
Sin
Solemn
The Christian Idea Of 'putting On Christ' Is The Whole Of Christianity.
Christian
Ideas
Whole
In Gethsemane The Holiest Of All Petitioners Prayed Three Times That A Certain Cup Might Pass From Him. It Did Not.
Three
Might
Cups
Unless The Religious Claims Of The Bible Are Again Acknowledged, Its Literary Claims Will, I Think, Be Given Only 'mouth Honour' And That Decreasingly.
Religious
Thinking
Mouths
In Charn [jadis] Had Taken No Notice Of Polly (till The Very End) Because Digory Was The One She Wanted To Make Use Of. Now That She Had Uncle Andrew, She Took No Notice Of Digory. I Expect Most Witches Are Like That. They Are Not Interested In Things Or People Unless They Can Use Them; They Are Terribly Practical.
Uncles
Taken
People
I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.
Children
Book
Writing
Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.
Fun
Thinking
People
A Woman Means By Unselfishness Chiefly Taking Trouble For Others; A Man Means Not Giving Trouble To Others...thus, While The Woman Thinks Of Doing Good Offices And The Man Of Respecting Other People's Rights, Each Sex, Without Any Obvious Unreason, Can And Does Regard The Other As Radically Selfish.
Sex
Selfish
Mean
When I'm Older I'll Understand" Said Lucy, " I Am Older And I Don't Think I Want To Understand", Replied Edmund
Thinking
Want
Said
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.
Adventure
Mean
Darkness
Temperance Referred Not Abstaining, But Going The Right Length And No Further...of Course It May Be The Duty Of A Particular Christian, Or Any Christian, At A Particular Time, To Abstain From Strong Drink, Either Because He Is The Sort Of Man Who Cannot Drink At All Without Drinking Too Much, Or Because He Wants To Give The Money To The Poor, Or Because He Is With People Who Are Inclined To Drunkenness And Must Not Encourage Them By Drinking Himself. But The Whole Point He Is Abstaining, For A Good Reason, From Something He Does Not Condemn And Which He Likes To See Other People Enjoying.
Christian
Strong
Drinking
Be Confident Small Immortals. You Are Not The Only Voice That All Things Utter, Nor Is There Eternal Silence In The Places Where You Cannot Come.
Voice
Silence
Be Confident
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.
First Love
People
Novelists
We Are...a Divine Work Of Art, Something That God Is Making...something With Which He Will Not Be Satisfied Until It Has A Certain Character.
Art
Character
Divine
When We Are Such As He Can Love Without Impediment, We Shall In Fact Be Happy.
Love
Happiness
Joy
Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons
Autumn
Seasons
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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