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In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

-C. S. Lewis

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In A Word, We

C. S. Lewis

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In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

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The Notion That Everyone Would Like Christianity To Be True, And Therefore All Atheists Are Brave Men Who Have Accepted The Defeat Of All Their Deepest Desires, Is Simply Impudent Nonsense.

When We Are Wholly His We Will Be More Ourselves Than Ever.

I Fancy That Most People Who Think At All Have Done A Great Deal Of Their Thinking In The First Fourteen Years.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

Oh, I'm A Dangerous Criminal, I Am,' Said The Dwarf Cheerfully.

No, I Don’t Wish I Knew Heaven Was Like The Picture In My Great Divorce, Because, If We Knew That, We Should Know It Was No Better. The Good Things Even Of This World Are Far Too Good Ever To Be Reached By Imagination. Even The Common Orange, You Know: No One Could Have Imagined It Before He Tasted It. How Much Less Heaven.

‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior

They Tell Me, Lord, That When I Seem To Be In Speech With You. Since But One Voice Is Heard, It

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

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

When I Have Learned To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now.

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

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

To What Will You Look For Help If You Will Not Look To That Which Is Stronger Than Yourself?

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.

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

The More Lucidly We Think, The More We Are Cut Off: The More Deeply We Enter Into Reality, The Less We Can Think.

God Has Infinite Attention To Spare For Each One Of Us.

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

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

Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Or Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You.

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

For In Self-giving, If Anywhere, We Touch A Rhythm Not Only Of All Creation But Of All Being.

I Didn’t Go To Religion To Make Me Happy. I Always Knew A Bottle Of Port Would Do That. If You Want A Religion To Make You Feel Really Comfortable, I Certainly Don’t Recommend Christianity.

Christian Inspirational

The Life-force Is A Sort Of Tame God. You Can Switch It On When You Want, But It Will Not Bother You. All The Thrills Of Religion And None Of The Cost. Is The Life-force The Greatest Achievement Of Wishful Thinking The World Has Yet Seen?

If Only This Toothache Would Go Away, I Could Write Another Chapter On The Problem Of Pain.

There Is Nothing Like Suspense And Anxiety For Barricading A Human's Mind Against The Enemy. He Wants Men To Be Concerned With What They Do; Our Business Is To Keep Them Thinking About What Will Happen To Them.

God Will Look To Every Soul Like Its First Love Because He Is Its First Love.

Our Father Refreshes Us On The Journey With Some Pleasant Inns, But Will Not Encourage Us To Mistake Them For Home.

For A Long Time I Used To Think This A Silly, Straw-splitting Distinction: How Could You Hate What A Man Did And Not Hate The Man? But Years Later It Occurred To Me That There Was One Man To Whom I Had Been Doing This All My Life - Namely Myself.

Nothing Is More Likely To Destroy A Species Or A Nation Than A Determination To Survive At All Costs

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.

I Was Driven To Whipsnade One Sunny Morning. When We Set Out I Did Not Believe That Jesus Christ Is The Son Of God, And When We Reached The Zoo I Did. Yet I Had Not Exactly Spent The Journey In Thought. Nor In Great Emotion. “emotional” Is Perhaps The Last Word We Can Apply To Some Of The Most Important Events. It Was More Like When A Man, After A Long Sleep, Still Lying Motionless In Bed, Becomes Aware That He Is Now Awake.

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

You Can't See Anything Properly While Your Eyes Are Blurred With Tears.

We Do Not Want To Merely “see” Beauty. We Want To Be United With It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Become Part Of It.

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

Every Poet And Musician And Artist, But For Grace">grace, Is Drawn Away From Love Of The Thing He Tells To Love Of The Telling Till, Down In Deep Hell, They Cannot Be Interested In God At All But Only In What They Say About Him.

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

The Worst Attitude Of All Would Be The Professional Attitude Which Regards Children In The Lump As A Sort Of Raw Material Which We Have To Handle.

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.

We Are Finite And God Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

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

No Natural Feelings Are High Or Low, Holy Or Unholy, In Themselves. They Are All Holy When God's Hand Is On The Rein. They All Go Bad When They Set Up On Their Own And Make Themselves Into False Gods.

The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.

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.

The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

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.

Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.

What Do They Teach Them At These Schools?

You Can Begin As If Nothing Had Ever Gone Wrong. White As Snow.

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

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

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.

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

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.

Look For The Valleys, The Green Places, And Fly Through Them. There Will Always Be A Way Through.

We Only Learn To Behave Ourselves In The Presence Of God.

Presence Of God

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

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

In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

Falling In Love Is Something That Happens To Us, Being Is Love Is Something We Do. No Passion Is Self Preservatory.

Falling In Love

But One Of The Worst Results Of Being A Slave And Being Forced To Do Things Is That When There Is No One To Force You Any More You Find You Have Almost Lost The Power Of Forcing Yourself.

Each New Power Won By Man Is A Power Over Man As Well. Each Advance Leaves Him Weaker As Well As Stronger.

Thought Provoking

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything. But No, That Is Not Quite Accurate. There Is One Place Where Her Absence Comes Locally Home To Me, And It Is A Place I Can't Avoid. I Mean My Own Body. It Had Such A Different Importance While It Was The Body Of H.'s Lover. Now It's Like An Empty House.

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.

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.

The Imagined Beings Have Their Insides On The Outside; They Are Visible Souls. And Man As A Whole, Man Pitted Against The Universe, Have We Seen Him At All Till We See That He Is Like A Hero In A Fairy Tale?

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

Oh Trees, Trees, Trees...wake. Don't You Remember It? Don't You Remember Me? Dryads And Hamadryads, Come Out, Come [out] To Me.

Look For Yourself, And You Will Find In The Long Run Only Hatred, Loneliness, Despair, Rage, Ruin, And Decay. But Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

They Call Him Aslan In That Place," Said Eustace. "what A Curious Name!" "not Half So Curious As Himself," Said Eustace Solemnly.

He Died Not For Men, But For Each Man. If Each Man Had Been The Only Man Made, He Would Have Done No Less.

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.

We May Note In Passing That He (jesus) Was Never Regarded As A Mere Moral Teacher. He Did Not Produce That Effect On Any Of The People Who Actually Met Him. He Produced Mainly Three Effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Admiration.

The Laws Of Thought Are Also The Laws Of Things: Of Things In The Remotest Space And The Remotest Time.

I Am Struck Here By The Curious Mixture Of Justice And Injustice In Our Lives. We Are Blamed For Our Real Faults But Usually Not On The Right Occasions.

War Creates No Absolutely New Situation: It Simply Aggravates The Permanent Human Situation So That We Can No Longer Ignore It. Human Life Has Always Been Lived On The Edge Of A Precipice.

The Question About Progress Has Become The Question Whether We Can Discover Any Way Of Submitting To The Worldwide Paternalism Of A Technocracy Without Losing All Personal Privacy And Independence. Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

Of Course It Should Be Pointed Out That, Though All Salvation Is Through Jesus, We Need Not Conclude That He Cannot Save Those Who Have Not Explicitly Accepted Him In This Life.

No Doubt Those Who Really Founded Modern Science Were Usually Those Whose Love Of Truth Exceeded Their Love Of Power.

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

[the Witch] Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor’s Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Start Working Backwards.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues.

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.

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

But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.

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

Well, Whatever They Say, You Don't Feel Like Ghosts.

God Is Not A Static Thing...but A Dynamic, Pulsating Activity, A Life, Almost A Kind Of Drama. Almost, If You Will Not Think Me Irreverent, A Kind Of Dance.

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

Perhaps The Experience Had Been So Complete That Repetition Would Be Vulgarity - Like Asking To Hear The Same Symphony Twice In A Day.

Miracles Are For Beginners.

If You Are A Christian You Do Not Have To Believe That All The Other Religions Are Simply Wrong All Through. If You Are An Atheist You Do Have To Believe That The Main Point In All The Religions Of The Whole World Is Simply One Huge Mistake.

At Other Times It Feels Like Being Mildly Drunk, Or Concussed. There Is A Sort Of Invisible Blanket Between The World And Me. I Find It Hard To Take In What Anyone Says.

The Christian And The Materialist Hold Different Beliefs About The Universe. They Can't Both Be Right. The One Who Is Wrong Will Act In A Way Which Simply Doesn't Fit The Real Universe. Consequently, With The Best Will In The World, He Will Be Helping His Fellow Creatures To Their Destruction.

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

The Only Moral That Is Of Any Value Is That Which Arises Inevitably From The Whole Cast Of The Author's Mind.

God, In The End, Gives People What They Most Want, Including Freedom From Himself. What Could Be More Fair?

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man... It Is The Comparison That Makes You Proud: The Pleasure Of Being Above The Rest. Once The Element Of Competition Is Gone, Pride Is Gone.

It Has Actually Become Very Necessary In Our Time To Rebut The Theory That Every Firm And Serious Friendship Is Really Homosexual.

The True Reader Reads Every Work Seriously In The Sense That He Reads It Whole-heartedly, Makes Himself As Receptive As He Can. But For That Very Reason He Cannot Possibly Read Every Work Solemly Or Gravely. For He Will Read 'in The Same Spirit That The Author Writ.'... He Will Never Commit The Error Of Trying To Munch Whipped Cream As If It Were Venison.

And The Whole Forest Would Give Itself Up To Jollification For Weeks On End.

Odd, The Way The Less The Bible Is Read The More It Is Translated

The Real Oxford Is A Close Corporation Of Jolly, Untidy, Lazy, Good-for-nothing Humorous Old Men, Who Have Been Electing Their Own Successors Ever Since The World Began And Who Intend To Go On With It. They'll Squeeze Under The Revolution Or Leap Over It When The Time Comes, Don't You Worry.

In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.

Why Love If Losing Hurts So Much? We Love To Know That We Are Not Alone.

All Names Will Soon Be Restored To Their Proper Owners.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

What We Want Is Not More Little Books About Christianity, But More Little Books By Christians On Other Subjects--with Their Christianity Latent.

Our Passions Are Not Too Strong, They Are Too Weak. We Are Far Too Easily Pleased.

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

Dearest Daughter. I Knew You Would Not Be Long In Coming To Me. Joy Shall Be Yours.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.

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

Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing--rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

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.

The Game Is To Have Them All Running About With Fire Extinguishers When There Is A Flood, And All Crowding To That Side Of The Boat Which Is Already Nearly Gunwale Under.

It Seems To Me That We Often, Almost Sulkily, Reject The Good That God Offers Us Because, At That Moment, We Expected Some Other Good.

A Pleasure Is Full Grown Only When It Is Remembered.

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

But Who Can Feel Ugly, When Their Heart Feels Joy

Nothing Can Seem Extraordinary Until You Have Discovered What Is Ordinary.

Either Jesus Is The Son Of God ; Or A Madman Or Worse. But His Being Just A Great Teacher? He's Not Left That Open To Us.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike...unless We Return To The Crude And Nursery-like Belief In Objective Values, We Perish.

Why You Fool, It's The Educated Reader Who Can Be Gulled. All Our Difficulty Comes With The Others. When Did You Meet A Workman Who Believes The Papers? He Takes It For Granted That They're All Propaganda And Skips The Leading Articles....he's Our Problem. We Have To Recondition Him. But The Educated Public, The People Who Read The High-brow Weeklies, Don't Need Reconditioning. They're All Right Already. They'll Believe Anything.

The Christian Has A Great Advantage Over Other Men, Not By Being Less Fallen Than They, Nor Less Doomed To Live In A Fallen World, But By Knowing That He Is A Fallen Man In A Fallen World.

The Very Man Who Has Argued You Down, Will Sometimes Be Found, Years Later, To Have Been Influenced By What You Said

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.

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.

The Sin Both Of Men And Of Angels, Was Rendered Possible By The Fact That God Gave Us Free Will.

My Own View Is That The Churches Should Frankly Recognise That The Majority Of The British People Are Not Christians And, Therefore, Cannot Be Expected To Live Christian Lives. There Ought To Be Two Distinct Kinds Of Marriage: One Governed By The State With Rules Enforced On All Citizens, The Other Governed By The Church With Rules Enforced By Her On Her Own Members." --about The Only Statement I Agree With In This Book

God Is Love, And That Love Works Through Men-especially Through The Whole Community Of Christians.

We Long For More And God's Promise Is That There Is More Awaiting Us. More To Delight Us Than We Will Ever Exhaust.

Lucy Woke Out Of The Deepest Sleep You Can Imagine, With The Feeling That The Voice She Liked Best In The World Had Been Calling Her Name.

My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.

The Sweetest Thing In All My Life Has Been The Longing — To Reach The Mountain, To Find The Place Where All The Beauty Came From — My Country, The Place Where I Ought To Have Been Born. Do You Think It All Meant Nothing, All The Longing? The Longing For Home? For Indeed It Now Feels Not Like Going, But Like Going Back.

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.

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

But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.

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

Far Overhead From Beyond The Veil Of Blue Sky Which Hid Them The Stars Sang Again; A Pure, Cold, Difficult Music. Then There Came A Swift Flash Like Fire (but It Burnt Nobody) Either From The Sky Or From The Lion Itself, And Every Drop Of Blood Tingled In The Children's Bodies, And The Deepest, Wildest Voice They Had Ever Heard Was Saying: "narnia, Narnia, Narnia, Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

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".

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.

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

Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

Because We Love Something Else More Than This World, We Love Even This World More Than Those Who Know No Other.

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

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."

In The Name Of The Fathers, And Of The Son And Of The Holy Ghost, Here Goes-i Mean Amen.

When You Go To Church You Are Really Listening-in To The Secret Wireless From Out Friends: That Is Why The Enemy Is So Anxious To Prevent Us From Going. He Does It By Playing On Our Conceit And Laziness And Intellectual Snobbery.

I Do Not Expect Old Heads On Young Shoulders.

Experience: That Most Brutal Of Teachers. But You Learn, My God Do You Learn.

It Is A Happy Moment When Our Desire Crosses With The Will Of Heavenly Father.

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

I Am Only Trying To Call Attention To A Fact; The Fact That This Year, Of This Month, Or, More Likely, This Very Day, We Have Failed To Practice Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

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

Falling In Love

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

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed.

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!

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

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.

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.

[milton's] Argument Is (a) St. Augustine Was Wrong In Thinking God's Only Purpose In Giving Adam A Female, Instead Of A Male, Companion, Was Copulation. For (b) There Is A "peculiar Comfort" In The Society Of Man And Woman "beside, (i.e. In Addition To, Apart From) The Genial Bed"; And (c) We Know From Scripture That Something Analogous To "play" Or "slackening The Cords" Occurs Even In God. That Is Why The Song Of Songs Describes A Thousand Raptures...far On The Hither Side Of Carnal Enjoyment.

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

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

The Real Problem Is Not Why Some Pious, Humble, Believing People Suffer, But Why Some Do Not.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law.

You Come Of The Lord Adam And The Lady Eve," Said Aslan. "and That Is Both Honour Enough To Erect The Head Of The Poorest Beggar, And Shame Enough To Bow The Shoulders Of The Greatest Emperor On Earth. Be Content.

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.

Wouldn't It Be Dreadful If Some Day In Our Own World, At Home, Men Start Going Wild Inside, Like The Animals Here, And Still Look Like Men, So That You'd Never Know Which Were Which.

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.

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

The Naturalists Have Been Engaged In Thinking About Nature. They Have Not Attended To The Fact That They Were Thinking. The Moment One Attends To This It Is Obvious That One's Own Thinking Cannot Be Merely A Natural Event, And That Therefore Something Other Than Nature Exists. The Supernatural Is Not Remote Or Abstruse; It Is A Matter Of Daily And Hourly Experience, As Intimate As Breathing.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

In Science We Have Been Reading Only The Notes To A Poem; In Christianity We Find The Poem Itself.

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

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.

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.

And Out Of That Hopeless Attempt Has Come Nearly All That We Call Human History—money, Poverty, Ambition, War, Prostitution, Classes, Empires, Slavery—the Long Terrible Story Of Man Trying To Find Something Other Than God Which Will Make Him Happy.

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

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

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

Shall I Ever Be Able To Read That Story Again; The One I Couldn't Remember? Will You Tell It To Me, Aslan? Oh Do,do,do." "indeed,yes, I Will Tell It To You For Years And Years. But Now, Come. We Must Meet The Master Of This House.

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.

A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.

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

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.

Bad Art Is Never Really Enjoyed In The Same Sense In Which Good Art Is Enjoyed. It Is Only "liked": It Never Startles, Prostrates, And Takes Captive.

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.

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

Now Repentance Is No Fun At All. It Is Something Much Harder Than Merely Eating Humble Pie. It Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self-will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into For Thousands Of Years. It Means Undergoing A Kind Of Death. In Fact, It Needs A Good Man To Repent. And Here's The Catch. Only A Bad Person Needs To Repent: Only A Good Person Can Repent Perfectly. The Worse You Are The More You Need It And The Less You Can Do It. The Only Person Who Could Do It Perfectly Would Be A Perfect Person - And He Would Not Need It.

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

I Object To That Remark Very Strongly! - The Magician's Nephew

We Have Lost The Invaluable Faculty Of Being Shocked A Faculty Which Has Hitherto Almost Distinguished The Man Or Woman From The Beast Or Child.

Human Beings Judge One Another By Their External Actions. God Judges Them By Their Moral Choices.

If Human Life Is In Fact Ordered By A Beneficent Being Whose Knowledge Of Our Real Needs And Of The Way In Which They Can Be Satisfied Infinitely Exceeds Our Own, We Must Expect A Priori That His Operations Will Often Appear To Us Far From Beneficent And Far From Wise, And That It Will Be Our Highest Prudence To Give Him Our Confidence In Spite Of This.

The Essence Of Religion, In My View, Is The Thirst For An End Higher Than Natural Ends.

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Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

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