Background Image

...

In Each Of My Friends There Is Something That Only Some Other Friend Can Fully Bring Out. By Myself I Am Not Large Enough To Call The Whole Man Into Activity; I Want Other Lights Than My Own To Show All His Facets... Hence True Friendship Is The Least Jealous Of Loves. Two Friends Delight To Be Joined By A Third, And Three By A Fourth, If Only The Newcomer Is Qualified To Become A Real Friend. They Can Then Say, As The Blessed Souls Say In Dante, "here Comes One Who Will Augment Our Loves." For In This Love "to Divide Is Not To Take Away.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In Each Of My

C. S. Lewis

...

In Each Of My Friends There Is Something That Only Some Other Friend Can Fully Bring Out. By Myself I Am Not Large Enough To Call The Whole Man Into Activity; I Want Other Lights Than My Own To Show All His Facets... Hence True Friendship Is The Least Jealous Of Loves. Two Friends Delight To Be Joined By A Third, And Three By A Fourth, If Only The Newcomer Is Qualified To Become A Real Friend. They Can Then Say, As The Blessed Souls Say In Dante, "here Comes One Who Will Augment Our Loves." For In This Love "to Divide Is Not To Take Away.

Views: 6

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

I Think We Must Fully Face The Fact That When Christianity Does Not Make A Man Very Much Better, It Makes Him Very Much Worse... Conversion May Make Of One Who Was, If No Better, No Worse Than An Animal, Something Like A Devil.

You Can't Lay Down Any Pattern For God. There Are Many Different Ways Of Bringing People Into His Kingdom, Even Some Ways That I Specially Dislike! I Have Therefore Learned To Be Cautious In My Judgment.

Be Sure That The Ins And Outs Of Your Individuality Are No Mystery To Him; And One Day They Will No Longer Be A Mystery To You.

All The Time The Joke Is That The Word "mine" In Its Fully Possessive Sense Cannot Be Uttered By A Human Being About Anything. In The Long Run Either [satan] Or God Will Say "mine" Of Each Thing That Exists, And Specially Of Each Man.

All Hell Is Smaller Than One Pebble Of Your Earthly World; But It Is Smaller Than One Atom Of This World, The Real World.

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

Children Are Not Deceived By Fairy-tales; They Are Often And Gravely Deceived By School-stories. Adults Are Not Deceived By Science-fiction ; They Can Be Deceived By The Stories In The Women's Magazines.

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

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.

I Don't Pray So That I Can Change God. I Pray So That God Can Change Me.

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.

Safety And Happiness Can Only Come From Individuals, Classes, And Nations Being Honest And Fair And Kind To Each Other.

The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

I Enjoyed My Breakfast This Morning, And I Think That Was A Good Thing And Do Not Think It Was Condemned By God. But I Do Not Think Myself A Good Man For Enjoying It.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear.

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

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

The Christian Life Is Simply A Process Of Having Your Natural Self Changed Into A Christ Self, And That This Process Goes On Very Far Inside. One's Most Private Wishes, One's Point Of View, Are The Things That Have To Be Changed.

All Human Beings Pass Away. Do Not Let Your Happiness Depend On Something You May Lose. If Love Is To Be A Blessing, Not A Misery, It Must Be For The Only Beloved Who Will Never Pass Away.

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

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

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

In Coming To Understand Anything We Are Rejecting The Facts As They Are For Us In Favour Of The Facts As They Are.

Precisely Because We Cannot Predict The Moment, We Must Be Ready At All Moments.

We Must Perpetually Try To Distinguish, However Closely They Get Entwined By The Subtle Nature Of The Facts And By The Secret Importunity Of Our Passions, Those Attitudes In A Writer Which We Can Honestly And Confidently Condemn As Real Evils, And Those Qualities In His Writing Which Simply Annoy And Offend Us As Men Of Taste.

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.

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.

While We Are Actually Subjected To Them, The 'moods' And 'spirits' Of Nature Point No Morals. Overwhelming Gaiety, Insupportable Grandeur, Sombre Desolation Are Flung At You. Make What You Can Of Them, If You Must Make At All. The Only Imperative That Nature Utters Is, 'look. Listen. Attend.

The Absent Are Easily Refuted.

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

Art Can Teach Without At All Ceasing To Be Art.

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.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Five Senses; An Incurably Abstract Intellect; A Haphazardly Selective Memory; A Set Of Preconceptions And Assumptions So Numerous That I Can Never Examine More Than A Minority Of Them - Never Become Even Conscious Of Them All.

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

Miracles Are For Beginners.

Things Always Work According To Their Nature.

Ye Cannot Know Eternal Reality By A Definition. Time Itself, And All The Acts And Events That Fill Time Are The Definition, And It Must Be Lived.

We All Want Progress, But If You're On The Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing An About-turn And Walking Back To The Right Road; In That Case, The Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is The Most Progressive.

A Man With An Obsession Is A Man Who Has Very Little Sales Resistance.

Shut Your Mouth; Open Your Eyes And Ears.

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

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.'

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

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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.

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.

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

It Is, Of Course, Quite True That God Will Not Love You Any Less, Or Have Less Use For You, If You Happen To Have Been Born With A Very Second-rate Brain.

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

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law: And Without Good Men You Cannot Have A Good Society.

Any Amount Of Theology Can Now Be Smuggled Into People's Minds Under The Cover Of Fiction Without Their Knowing It.

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.

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.

We Might Think That God Wanted Simply Obedience To A Set Of Rules: Whereas He Really Wants People Of A Particular Sort.

God Is The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On.

If There Ever Was A Time That Nothing Existed, Then Nothing Would Exist Now

For In Calormen, Story-telling (whether The Stories Are True Or Made Up) Is A Thing You're Taught, Just As English Boys And Girls Are Taught Essay-writing. The Difference Is That People Want To Hear The Stories, Whereas I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Wanted To Read The Essays.

In The Ancient World Individuals Have Sold Themselves As Slaves, In Order To Eat. So In Society. Here Is A Witch-doctor Who Can Save Us From The Sorcerers - A War-lord Who Can Save Us From The Barbarians - A Church That Can Save Us From Hell. Give Them What They Ask, Give Ourselves To Them Bound And Blindfold, If Only They Will! Perhaps The Terrible Bargain Will Be Made Again. We Cannot Blame Men For Making It. We Can Hardly Wish Them Not To. Yet We Can Hardly Bear That They Should.

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

One Flesh. Or If You Prefer, One Ship. The Starboard Engine Has Gone. I, The Port Engine, Must Chug Along Somehow Till We Make Harbour. Or Rather, Till The Journey Ends.

He Wondered How He Could Ever Have Thought Of The Planets, Even Of The Earth, As Islands Of Life And Reality Floating In A Deadly Void. Now With A Certainty Which Never After Deserted Him, He Saw The Planets - As Mere Holes Or Gaps In The Living Heaven - Excluded And Rejected Wastes Of Heavy Matter And Murky Air, Formed Not By Addition To, But By Subtraction From, The Surrounding Brightness.

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.

What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Till You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On.

If A Thing Is Free To Be Good It Is Also Free To Be Bad. And Free Will Is What Has Made Evil Possible. Why, Then, Did God Give Them Free Will? Because Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Is Also The Only Thing That Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

Every Poem Can Be Considered In Two Ways--as What The Poet Has To Say, And As A Thing Which He Makes.

This Is A Book About Something

Readers Are Advised To Remember That The Devil Is A Liar.

A Proud Man Is Always Looking Down On Things And People; And, Of Course, As Long As You Are Looking Down, You Cannot See Something That Is Above You.

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

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death; I Must Never Let It Get Snowed Under Or Turned Aside; I Must Make It The Main Object Of Life To Press On To That Other Country And To Help Others To Do The Same.

In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.

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.

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.

We Must Learn By Experience To Avoid Either Trains Of Thought Or Social Situations Which For Us (not Necessarily For Everyone) Lead To Temptations. Like Motoring-don't Wait Till The Last Moment Before You Put On The Brakes But Put Them On, Gently And Quietly, While The Danger Is Still A Good Way Off.

Train Of Thought

Narnia! It's All In The Wardrobe Just Like I Told You!

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.

For You Will Certainly Carry Out God's Purpose, However You Act, But It Makes A Difference To You Whether You Serve Like Judas Or Like John.

Making A Difference

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

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

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

To Be Religious Is To Have One's Attention Fixed On God And On One's Neighbour In Relation To God.

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

To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.

All Mortals Tend To Turn Into The Thing They Are Pretending To Be. This Is Elementary

Screwtape Letters

Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.

She's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others - You Can Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

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

I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road.

To See, In Some Measure, Like God. His Love And His Knowledge Are Not Distinct From One Another, Not From Him. We Could Almost Say He Sees Because He Loves, And Therefore Loves Although He Sees.

Perhaps Your Own Reiterated Cries Deafen You To The Voice You Hoped To Hear

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

A Sensible Human Once Said, "if People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit"; And Again, "she's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others You Can Always Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

Dance And Game Are Frivolous, Unimportant Down Here; For "down Here" Is Not Their Natural Place. Here, They Are A Moment's Rest From The Life We Were Placed Here To Live. But In This World Everything Is Upside Down. That Which, If It Could Be Prolonged Here, Would Be A Truancy, Is Likest That Which In A Better Country Is The End Of Ends. Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

God Is Not An Optional Extra, He's An Absolute Must!

No Man Who Values Originality Will Ever Be Original. But Try To Tell The Truth As You See It, Try To Do Any Bit Of Work As Well As It Can Be Done For The Work's Sake, And What Men Call Originality Will Come Unsought.

Any Patch Of Sunlight In A Wood Will Show You Something About The Sun Which You Could Never Get From Reading Books On Astronomy. These Pure And Spontaneous Pleasures Are ‘patches Of Godlight’ In The Woods Of Our Experience.

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

You Are Guilty Of No Evil, Ransom Of Thulcandra, Except A Little Fearfulness. For That, The Journey You Go On Is Your Pain, And Perhaps Your Cure: For You Must Be Either Mad Or Brave Before It Is Ended.

Who Can Endure A Doctrine Which Would Allow Only Dentists To Say Whether Our Teeth Were Aching, Only Cobblers To Say Whether Our Shoes Hurt Us, And Only Governments To Tell Us Whether We Were Being Well Governed?

Regarding The Debate About Faith And Works: It's Like Asking Which Blade In A Pair Of Scissors Is Most Important.

Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectations And Memory.

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

Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It.

To Love You As I Should, I Must Worship God As Creator. When I Have Learnt To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now. In So Far As I Learn To Love My Earthly Dearest At The Expense Of God And Instead Of God, I Shall Be Moving Towards The State In Which I Shall Not Love My Earthly Dearest T All. When First Things Are Put First, Second Things Are Not Suppressed Bu Increased.

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

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

All That Are In Hell, Choose It. Without That Self-choice There Could Be No Hell.

No Man Who Says, 'i'm As Good As You,' Believes It. He Would Not Say It If He Did.

We All Agree That Forgiveness Is A Beautiful Idea Until We Have To Practice It.

Every Contact You Make With Everyone You Meet Will Help Them Or Hinder Them On Their Journey To Heaven.

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

Seek Unity And You Will Find Neither Unity Nor Truth.seek The Light Of Truth, And You Will Find Unity And Truth.

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

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. Evil Is A Parasite, Not An Original Thing.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading.

We Must Beware Of The Past, Mustn't We? I Mean That Any Fixing Of The Mind On Old Evils Beyond What Is Absolutely Necessary For Repenting Our Own Sins And Forgiving Those Of Others Is Certainly Useless And Usually Bad For Us. Notice In Dante That The Lost Souls Are Entirely Concerned With Their Past! Not So The Saved.

Kindness Consents Very Readily To The Removal Of Its Object – We Have All Met People Whose Kindness To Animals Is Constantly Leading Them To Kill Animals Lest They Should Suffer. Kindness, Merely As Such, Cares Not Whether Its Object Becomes Good Or Bad, Provided Only That It Escapes Suffering.

That Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporal Sufferring, "no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It" Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory.

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

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.

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

Growing Maturity Is Marked By The Increasing Liberties We Take With Our Travelling... We Made The Discovery (some People Never Make It) That Real Books Can Be Taken On A Journey And That Hours Of Golden Reading Can So Be Added To Its Other Delights.

God Has No Needs. Human Love, As Plato Teaches Us, Is The Child Of Poverty – Of Want Or Lack; It Is Caused By A Real Or Supposed Goal In Its Beloved Which The Lover Needs And Desires. But God's Love, Far From Being Caused By Goodness In The Object, Causes All The Goodness Which The Object Has, Loving It First Into Existence, And Then Into Real, Though Derivative, Lovability. God Is Goodness. He Can Give Good, But Cannot Need Or Get It. In That Sense , His Love Is, As It Were, Bottomlessly Selfless By Very Definition; It Has Everything To Give, And Nothing To Receive.

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not.

We Are Forbidden To Neglect The Assembling Of Ourselves Together. Christianity Is Already Institutional In The Earliest Of Its Documents. The Church Is The Bride Of Christ. We Are Members Of One Another.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is. If There Are Rats In A Cellar, You Are Most Likely To See Them If You Go In Very Suddenly. But The Suddenness Does Not Create The Rats; It Only Prevents Them From Hiding. In The Same Way The Suddenness Of The Provocation Does Not Make Me Ill Tempered; It Only Shows Me What An Ill-tempered Man I Am.

Inspirational Life

The Choice Of Every Lost Soul Can Be Expressed In The Words "better To Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven." There Is Always Something They Insist On Keeping, Even At The Price Of Misery.

Hell Is A State Of Mind -- Ye Never Said A Truer Word. And Every State Of Mind, Left To Itself, Every Shutting Up Of The Creature Within The Dungeon Of Its Own Mind -- Is, In The End, Hell. But Heaven Is Not A State Of Mind. Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly.

You Do Not Fail In Obedience Through Lack Of Love, But You Have Lost Love Because You Never Attempted Obedience.

[the Natural Life] Knows That If The Spiritual Life Gets Hold Of It, All Its Self-centredness And Self-will Are Going To Be Killed And It Is Ready To Fight Tooth And Nail To Avoid That.

The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Men, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.

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

Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

The Universe Rings True Whenever You Fairly Test It.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.

The Whole Difficulty Of Understanding Hell Is That The Thing To Be Understood Is So Nearly Nothing.

If Conversion Makes No Improvements In A Man's Outward Actions Then I Think His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

..(t)here Are Two Opposite Reasons For Being A Democrat. You May Think All Men So Good That They Deserve A Share In The Government Of The Commonwealth, And So Wise That The Commonwealth Needs Their Advice. That Is, In My Opinion, The False, Romantic Doctrine Of Democracy. On The Other Hand, You May Believe Fallen Men To Be So Wicked That Not One Of Them Can Be Trusted With Any Irresponsible Power Over His Fellows.

You Will Not Find The Warrior, The Poet, The Philosopher Or The Christian By Staring Into His Eyes As If He Were Your Mistress: Better Fight Beside Him, Read With Him, Argue With Him, Pray With Him.

The Great Thing With Unhappy Times Is To Take Them Bit By Bit, Hour By Hour, Like An Illness. It Is Seldom The Present, The Exact Present, That Is Unbearable.

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.

Love, In Its Own Nature, Demands The Perfecting Of The Beloved.

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

Presence Of God

A Man Can't Be Always Defending The Truth; There Must Be A Time To Feed On It.

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

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege Of Individuality.. .here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law.

Watchin' And Listenin' Is The Thing At Present; Not Talking.

Of Course, We Are To Pray For Spiritual Awakening, And In Various Ways We Can Do Something Toward It. But We Must Remember That Neither Paul Nor Apollos Gives The Increase.

Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.

Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

Omnipotence Means Power To Do All That Is Intrinsically Possible, Not To Do The Intrinsically Impossible. You May Attribute Miracles To Him, But Not Nonsense.

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

Please Will You Do My Job For Me.

The Demand Of The Loveless And The Self-imprisoned That They Should Be Allowed To Blackmail The Universe: That Till They Consent To Be Happy (on Their Own Terms) No One Else Shall Taste Joy: That Theirs Should Be The Final Power; That Hell Should Be Able To Veto Heaven.

He Thinks Great Folly, Child,' Said Aslan. "this World Is Bursting With Life For These Few Days Because The Song With Which I Called It Into Life Still Hangs In The Air And Rumbles In The Ground. It Will Not Be So For Long. But I Cannot Tell That To This Old Sinner, And I Cannot Comfort Him Either; He Has Made Himself Unable To Hear My Voice. If I Spoke To Him, He Would Hear Only Growlings And Roarings. Oh, Adam's Son, How Cleverly You Defend Yourself Against All That Might Do You Good!

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

The Real Trouble About The Duty Of Forgiveness Is That You Do It With All Your Might On Monday And Then Find On Wednesday That It Hasn't Stayed Put And All Has To Be Done Over Again.

The False Religion Of Lust Is Baser Than The False Religion Of Mother-love Or Patriotism Or Art: But Lust Is Less Likely To Be Made Into A Religion.

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.

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

If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing, Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

There Have Been Men Before Now Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself.

A Silly Idea Is Current That Good People Do Not Know What Temptation Means. This Is An Obvious Lie. Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is... A Man Who Gives In To Temptation After Five Minutes Simply Does Not Know What It Would Have Been Like An Hour Later. That Is Why Bad People, In One Sense, Know Very Little About Badness. They Have Lived A Sheltered Life By Always Giving In.

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 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.

We Sit Down Before The Picture In Order To Have Something Done To Us, Not That We May Do Things With It. The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way (there Is No Good Asking First Whether The Work Before You Deserves Such A Surrender, For Until You Have Surrendered You Cannot Possibly Find Out.

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

In Our Own Case We Accept Excuses Too Easily; In Other People's, We Do Not Accept Them Easily Enough.

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

But As For Aslan Himself, The Beavers And The Children Didn't Know What To Do Or Say When They Saw Him. People Who Have Not Been In Narnia Sometimes Think That A Thing Cannot Be Good And Terrible At The Same Time. If The Children Had Ever Thought So, They Were Cured Of It Now. For When They Tried To Look At Aslan's Face They Just Caught A Glimpse Of The Golden Mane And The Great, Royal, Solemn, Overwhelming Eyes; And Then They Found They Couldn't Look At Him And Went All Trembly.

The Real Moon,if You Could Reach It And Survive It, Would In A Deep And Deadly Sense Be Just Like Anywhere Else...no Man Would Find An Abiding Strangness On The Moon Unless He Were The Sort Of Man Who Could Find It In His Own Back Garden.

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

Humility Is Self-forgetfulness.

You Can Do More With A Castle In A Story Than With The Best Cardboard Castle That Ever Stood On A Nursery Table.

The Holier A Man Becomes, The More He Mourns Over The Unholiness Which Remains In Him.

It Is Funny How Mortals Always Picture Us As Putting Things Into Their Minds: In Reality Our Best Work Is Done By Keeping Things Out.

The Guide Sang: The New Age, The New Art, The New Ethic And Thought, And Fools Crying, Because It Has Begun It Will Continue As It Has Begun! The Wheel Runs Fast, Therefore The Wheel Will Run Faster For Ever, The Old Age Is Done, We Have New Lights And See Without The Sun. (though They Lay Flat The Mountains And Dry Up The Sea, Wilt Thou Yet Change, As Though God Were A God?)

Something Deep In The Human Heart Breaks At The Thought Of A Life Of Mediocrity.

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe The Sun Has Risen, Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

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.

Trending Author

Category