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In The Same Way A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Over Again After Each Stumble--because The Christ-life Is Inside Him, Repairing Him All The Time, Enabling Him To Repeat (in Some Degree) The Kind Of Voluntary Death Which Christ Himself Carried Out." - Mere Christianity

-C. S. Lewis

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In The Same Way

C. S. Lewis

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In The Same Way A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Over Again After Each Stumble--because The Christ-life Is Inside Him, Repairing Him All The Time, Enabling Him To Repeat (in Some Degree) The Kind Of Voluntary Death Which Christ Himself Carried Out." - Mere Christianity

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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

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

I Thought I Could Describe A State; Make A Map Of Sorrow. Sorrow, However, Turns Out To Be Not A State, But A Process. It Needs Not A Map, But A History, And If I Don't Stop Writing That History At Some Quite Arbitrary Point, There's No Reason Why I Should Ever Stop.

What Would Really Satisfy Us Would Be A God Who Said Of Anything We Happened To Like Doing, 'what Does It Matter So Long As They Are Contented?'

In The Long Run The Answer To All Those Who Object To The Doctrine Of Hell, Is Itself A Question: What Are You Asking God To Do? To Wipe Out Their Past Sins And, At All Costs, To Give Them A Fresh Start, Smoothing Every Difficulty And Offering Every Miraculous Help? But He Has Done So, On Calvary. To Forgive Them? They Will Not Be Forgiven. To Leave Them Alone? Alas, I Am Afraid That Is What He Does.

Friendship (as The Ancients Saw) Can Be A School Of Virtue, But Also (as They Did Not See) A School Of Vice. It Is Ambivalent. It Makes Good Men Better And Bad Men Worse.

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen Of Narnia.

Well!' Said Puddleglum, Rubbing His Hands. 'this Is Just What I Needed. If These Chaps Don't Teach Me To Take A Serious View Of Life, I Don't Know What Will.

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.

Need-love Says Of A Woman "i Cannot Live Without Her"; Gift-love Longs To Give Her Happiness, Comfort, Protection - If Possible, Wealth; Appreciative Love Gazes And Holds Its Breath And Is Silent, Rejoices That Such A Wonder Should Exist Even If Not For Him, Will Not Be Wholly Dejected By Losing Her, Would Rather Have It So Than Never To Have Seen Her At All.

It Is Only When You Are Asked To Believe In Reason Coming From Non-reason That You Must Cry Halt. Human Minds. They Do Not Come From Nowhere.

Inner Silence Is For Our Race A Difficult Achievement. There Is A Chattering Part Of The Mind Which Continues, Until It Is Corrected, To Chatter On Even In The Holiest Places.

The Christian Idea Of 'putting On Christ' Is The Whole Of Christianity.

He Has Room For People With Very Little Sense, But He Wants Everyone To Use What Sense They Have.

The Christian Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us.

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

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear. I Am Not Afraid, But The Sensation Is Like Being Afraid. The Same Fluttering In The Stomach, The Same Restlessness, The Yawning. I Keep On Swallowing.

Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.

Friendship Love

Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Consciences, But Shouts In Our Pains. It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

There Is A Story About A Schoolboy Who Was Asked What He Thought God Was Like. He Replied That, As Far As He Could Make Out, God Was 'the Sort Of Person Who Is Always Snooping Around To See If Anyone Is Enjoying Himself And Then Trying To Stop It.'

The New Testament Writers Speak As If Christ's Achievement In Rising From The Dead Was The First Event Of Its Kind In The Whole History Of The Universe. He Is The 'first Fruits,' The Pioneer Of Life,' He Has Forced Open A Door That Has Been Locked Since The Death Of The First Man. He Has Met, Fought, And Beaten The King Of Death. Everything Is Different Because He Has Done So.

Friendship Arises Out Of Mere Companionship When Two Or More Of The Companions Discover That They Have In Common Some Insight Or Interest Or Even Taste Which The Others Do Not Share And Which, Till That Moment, Each Believed To Be His Own Unique Treasure (or Burden).

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

If War Is Ever Lawful, Then Peace Is Sometimes Sinful.

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

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

I Sometimes Think That Shame, Mere Awkward, Senseless Shame, Does As Much Towards Preventing Good Acts And Straightforward Happiness As Any Of Our Vices Can Do.

The Discomfiture We Feel May Be Our Most Accurate Human Sensation; Reminding Us We Are Not Quite "at Home" Here.

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

There Is Someone That I Love Even Though I Don't Approve Of What He Does. There Is Someone I Accept Though Some Of His Thoughts And Actions Revolt Me. There Is Someone I Forgive Though He Hurts The People I Love The Most. That Person Is......me.

I Have Come," Said A Deep Voice Behind Them. They Turned And Saw The Lion Himself, So Bright And Real And Strong That Everything Else Began At Once To Look Pale And Shadowy Compared With Him.

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

Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth. What You Now Call The Free Play Of Inquiry Has Neither More Nor Less To Do With The Ends For Which Intelligence Was Given You Than Masturbation Has To Do With Marriage.

If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.

I Prefer Being Honest To Being 'honest To God.'

We Are Not Meant To Be Perpetually Solemn: We Must Play.

We Know Nothing Of Religion Here: We Only Think Of Christ.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

It May Be Hard For An Egg To Turn Into A Bird: It Would Be A Jolly Sight Harder For It To Learn To Fly While Remaining An Egg. We Are Like Eggs At Present. And You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

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.

We Hear A Great Deal About The Rudeness Of The Rising Generation. I Am An Oldster Myself And Might Be Expected To Take The Oldsters' Side, But In Fact I Have Been Far More Impressed By The Bad Manners Of Parents To Children Than By Those Of Children To Parents.

When The Whole World Is Running Towards A Cliff, He Who Is Running In The Opposite Direction Appears To Have Lost His Mind.

Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And... God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again

Once When I Had Remarked On The Affection Quite Often Found Between Cat And Dog, My Friend Replied, "yes. But I Bet No Dog Would Ever Confess It To The Other Dogs.

With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.

A Real Desire To Believe All The Good You Can Of Others And To Make Others As Comfortable As You Can Will Solve Most Of The Problems.

We Do Know That No Person Can Be Saved Except Through Christ. We Do Not Know That Only Those Who Know Him Can Be Saved By Him.

Is There A Difference Between A Man Who Thinks That Honesty Is The Best Policy, And An Honest Man?

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

First, I Do Not Sit Down At My Desk To Put Into Verse Something That Is Already Clear In My Mind. If It Were Clear In My Mind, I Should Have No Incentive Or Need To Write About It. We Do Not Write In Order To Be Understood; We Write In Order To Understand.

Necessity May Not Be The Opposite Of Freedom, And Perhaps A Man Is Most Free When, Instead Of Producing Motives, He Could Only Say, "i Am What I Do.

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.

There Is No Other Day. All Days Are Present Now. This Moment Contains All Moments.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai. The Moral Law May Exist To Be Transcended: But There Is No Transcending It For Those Who Have Not First Admitted Its Claims Up On Them, And Then Tried With All Their Strength To Meet That Claim, And Fairly And Squarely Faced The Fact Of Their Failure.

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

Even If There Were Pains In Heaven, All Who Understand Would Desire Them.

There Seems To Be Hardly Any One Among My Acquaintance From Whom I Have Not Learned.

Emeth Came Walking Forward Into The Open Strip Of Grass Between The Bonfire And The Stable. His Eyes Were Shining, His Face Was Solemn, His Hand Was On His Sword-hilt, And He Carried His Head High. Jill Felt Like Crying When She Looked At His Face. And Jewel Whispered In The King's Ear, "by The Lion's Mane, I Almost Love This Young Warrior, Calormene Though He Be. He Is Worthy Of A Better God Than Tash.

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

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

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

Falling In Love

There Is Hope For A Man Who Has Never Read Malory Or Boswell Or Tristam Shandy Or Shakespeare's Sonnets: But What Can You Do With A Man Who Says He "has Read" Them, Meaning He Has Read Them Once, And Thinks That This Settles The Matter?

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

An Ulster Scot May Come To Disbelieve In God, But Not To Wear His Weekday Clothes On The Sabbath.

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

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

We Want To Know Not How We Should Pray If We Were Perfect But How We Should Pray Being As We Now Are ... It Is No Use To Ask God With Factitious Earnestness For A When Our Whole Mind Is In Reality Filled With The Desire For B. We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us, Not What Ought To Be In Us.

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

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

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

I Am Perfectly Convinced That Whatever The Gospels Are They Are Not Legends. I Have Read A Great Deal Of Legend And I Am Quite Clear They Are Not That Sort Of Thing....christ Bent Down And Scribbled In The Dust With His Finger. Nothing Comes Of This. No One Has Based Any Doctrine On It. And The Act Of Inventing Little Irrelevant Details To Make An Imaginary Scene More Convincing Is Purely A Modern Art.

I Believe That There Are Too Many Accommodating Preachers... Jesus Christ Did Not Say "go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right." The Gospel Is Something Completely Different. In Fact, It Is Directly Opposed To The World.

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

It Is Not Enough To Want To Get Rid Of One’s Sins, We Also Need To Believe In The One Who Saves Us From Our Sins.

Of Course All Children's Literature Is Not Fantastic, So All Fantastic Books Need Not Be Children's Books. It Is Still Possible, Even In An Age So Ferociously Anti-romantic As Our Own, To Write Fantastic Stories For Adults: Though You Will Usually Need To Have Made A Name In Some More Fashionable Kind Of Literature Before Anyone Will Publish Them.

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

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him. Nobody Can Always Have Devout Feelings: And Even If We Could, Feelings Are Not What God Principally Cares About. Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

To Make Christianity A Private Affair While Banishing All Privacy Is To Relegate It To The Rainbow's End Or The Greek Calends.

What Does Not Satisfy When We Find It, Was Not The Thing We Were Desiring.

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".

Unless Thought Is Valid We Have No Reason To Believe In The Real Universe.

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

There Is No Neutral Ground In The Universe. Every Square Inch, Every Split Second Is Claimed By God, And Counterclaimed By Satan.

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.

Once You Were A Child. Once You Knew What Inquiry Was For. There Was A Time When You Asked Questions Because You Wanted Answers, And Were Glad When You Had Found Them. Become A Child Again, Even Now... You Have Gone Wrong. Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth.

For The Church Is Not A Human Society Of People United By Their Natural Affinities But The Body Of Christ, In Which All Members, However Different, (and He Rejoices In Their Differences And By No Means Wishes To Iron Them Out) Must Share The Common Life, Complementing And Helping One Another Precisely By Their Differences.

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

An 'impersonal God'-well And Good. A Subjective God Of Beauty, Truth And Goodness, Inside Our Own Heads-better Still. A Formless Life-force Surging Through Us, A Vast Power Which We Can Tap-best Of All. But God Himself, Alive, Pulling At The Other End Of The Cord, Perhaps Approaching At An Infinite Speed, The Hunter, King, Husband-that Is Quite Another Matter.

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

The More We Let God Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become - Because He Made Us. He Invented Us. He Invented All The Different People That You And I Were Intended To Be. . .it Is When I Turn To Christ, When I Give Up Myself To His Personality, That I First Begin To Have A Real Personality Of My Own.

A Centaur Has A Man-stomach And A Horse-stomach. And Of Course Both Want Breakfast. So First Of All He Has Porridge And Pavenders And Kidneys And Bacon And Omlette And Cold Ham And Toast And Marmalade And Coffee And Beer. And After That He Tends To The Horse Part Of Himself By Grazing For An Hour Or So And Finishing Up With A Hot Mash, Some Oats, And A Bag Of Sugar. That's Why It's Such A Serious Thing To Ask A Centaur To Stay For The Weeekend. A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

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

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

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

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

And Since We Cannot Deceive The Whole Human Race All The Time, It Is Most Important Thus To Cut Every Generation Off From All Others; For Where Learning Makes A Free Commerce Between The Ages There Is Always The Danger That The Characteristic Errors Of One May Be Corrected By The Characteristic Truths Of Another.

Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It. It Enriches The Necessary Competencies That Daily Life Requires And Provides; And In This Respect, It Irrigates The Deserts That Our Lives Have Already Become.

When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The World-old, World-wide Religio Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft. Protestantism,in Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes. Catholicism Is Accused Of Being Too Much Like All The Other Religions; Protestantism Of Being Insufficiently Like A Religion At All. Hence Plato, With His Transcendent Forms, Is The Doctor Of Protestants; Aristotle, With His Immanent Forms, The Doctor Of Catholics.

Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.

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.

Men Became Scientific Because They Expected Law In Nature, And They Expected Law In Nature Because They Believed In A Law Giver.

Those Of Us Who Are Blamed When Old For Reading Childish Books Were Blamed When Children For Reading Books Too Old For Us.

A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.

Theocracy Is The Worst Of All Governments. If We Must Have A Tyrant, A Robber Baron Is Far Better Than An Inquisitor. The Baron's Cruelty May Sometimes Sleep, His Cupidity At Some Point Be Sated; And Since He Dimly Knows He Is Doing Wrong He May Possibly Repent. But The Inquisitor Who Mistakes His Own Cruelty And Lust Of Power And Fear For The Voice Of Heaven Will Torment Us Infinitely Because He Torments Us With The Approval Of His Own Conscience And His Better Impulses Appear To Him As Temptations.

And A Charge Of Lying Against Someone Whom You Have Always Found Truthful Is A Very Serious Thing; A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

My Argument Against God Was That The Universe Seemed So Cruel And Unjust. But How Had I Got This Idea Of Just And Unjust? A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line. What Was I Comparing This Universe With When I Called It Unjust?

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.

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.

Forgiving And Being Forgiven Are Two Names For The Same Thing. The Important Thing Is That A Discord Has Been Resolved.

Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

Screwtape Letters

In Reality, Moral Rules Are Directions For Running The Human Machine. Every Moral Rule Is There To Prevent A Breakdown, Or A Strain, Or A Friction, In The Running Of That Machine. That Is Why These Rules At First Seem To Be Constantly Interfering With Our Natural Inclinations.

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

But However Happy You Are Feeling, You Can't Talk With Your Mouth Full Of Snow.

If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business.

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?

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

He Told People That Their Sins Were Forgiven, And Never Waited To Consult All The Other People Whom Their Sins Had Undoubtedly Injured. He Unhesitatingly Behaved As If He Was The Party Chiefly Concerned, The Person Chiefly Offended In All Offenses. This Makes Sense Only If He Really Was God Whose Laws Are Broken And Whose Love Is Wounded In Every Sin.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything, And Your Heart Will Most Certainly Be Wrung And Possibly Broken ... The Only Place Outside Heaven Where You Can Be Perfectly Safe From All The Dangers And Perturbations Of Love Is Hell.

...we Sacrifice Other Species To Our Own Not Because Our Own Has Any Objective Metaphysical Privilege Over Others, But Simply Because It Is Ours. It May Be Very Natural To Have This Loyalty To Our Own Species, But Let Us Hear No More From The Naturalists About The "sentimentality" Of Anti-vivisectionists. If Loyalty To Our Own Species - Preference For Man Simply Because We Are Men - Is Not Sentiment, Then What Is?

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

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

I Can Answer That Only By Hearsay, Returned The Guide, For Pain Is A Secret Which He Has Shared With Your Race And Not With Mine; And You Would Find It As Hard To Explain Suffering To Me As I Would Find It To Reveal To You The Secrets Of The Mountain People. But Those Who Know Best Say This, That Any Liberal Man Would Choose The Pain Of This Desire, Even For Ever, Rather Than The Peace Of Feeling It No Longer; And That Though The Best Thing Is To Have, The Next Best Is To Want, And The Worst Of All Is Not To Want.

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

We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains: It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World....no Doubt Pain As God's Megaphone Is A Terrible Instrument; It May Lead To Final And Unrepented Rebellion. But It Gives The Only Opportunity The Bad Man Can Have For Amendment. It Removes The Veil; It Plants The Flag Of Truth Within The Fortress Of The Rebel Soul.

I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.

Screwtape Letters

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

I Believe, To Be Sure, That Any Man Who Reaches Heaven Will Find That What He Abandoned (even In Plucking Out His Right Eye) Has Not Been Lost: That The Kernel Of What He Was Really Seeking Even In His Most Depraved Wishes Will Be There, Beyond Expectation, Waiting For Him In 'the High Countries'.

We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us; Not What Ought To Be In Us.

Safe?” Said Mr. Beaver; “don’t You Hear What Mrs. Beaver Tells You? Who Said Anything About Safe? ‘course He Isn’t Safe. But He’s Good. He’s The King, I Tell You.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable. How Many Hours Are In A Mile? Is Yellow Square Or Round? Probably Half The Questions We Ask - Half Our Great Theological And Metaphysical Problems - Are Like That.

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.

According To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride.

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

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Everyone Else To Give It Up.

It May Be Better To Live Under Robber Barons Than Under Omnipotent Moral Busybodies.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

We May Not Be Able To Get Certainty, But We Can Get Probability, And Half A Loaf Is Better Than No Bread.

Disobedience To Conscience Is Voluntary; Bad Poetry, On The Other Hand, Is Usually Not Made On Purpose.

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

A Promise Must Be About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling A Certain Way.

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.

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

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.

Read And Re-read--"re-reading, We Always Find A New Book.

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

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.

Love, While Always Forgiving Of Imperfections And Mistakes, Can Never Cease To Will Their Removal.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed-this Is The Hardest Of All Temptations To Resist

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.

That World Is Ended, As If It Had Never Been. Let The Race Of Adam And Eve Take Warning.

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

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.

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

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You....hand Over The Whole Natural Self, All The Desires Which You Think Innocent As Well As The Ones You Think Wicked- The Whole Outfit. I Will Give You A New Self Instead. In Fact, I Will Give You Myself: My Own Will Shall Become Yours.

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

A Great Deal Of What Is Being Published By Writers In The Religious Tradition Is A Scandal And Is Actually Turning People Away From The Church. The Liberal Writers Who Are Continually Accommodating And Whittling Down The Truth Of The Gospel Are Responsible.

Even In This World Of Course It Is The Stupidest Children Who Are Most Childish And The Stupidest Grown-ups Who Are Most Grown-up.

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

But Why,... If You Have A Serious Comment To Make On The Real Life Of Men, Must You Do It By Talking About A Phantasmagoric Never-never Land Of Your Own? Because, I Take It, One Of The Main Things The Author Wants To Say Is That The Real Life Of Men Is Of That Mythical And Heroic Quality.

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.

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gifts...thus A Heavy Task Is Laid Upon Gift-love. It Must Work Toward Its Own Abdication. We Must Aim At Making Ourselves Superfluous. The Hour When We Can Say 'they Need Me No Longer' Should Be Our Reward. But The Instinct, Simply In Its Own Nature, Has No Power To Fulfill This Law.

If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.

Quarrelling Means Trying To Show That The Other Man Is In The Wrong. (and) There Is No Sense In Trying To Do That Unless You And He Had Some Sort Of Agreement As To What Righ And Wrong Are.

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

Are The Gods Not Just?' 'oh No, Child. What Would Become Us Us If They Were?

Into The Void Of Silence, Into The Empty Space Of Nothing, The Joy Of Life Is Unfurled.

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

They Have Chosen Cunning Instead Of Belief. Their Prison Is Only In Their Minds, Yet They Are In That Prison; And So Afraid Of Being Taken In That They Cannot Be Taken Out.

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Them.

Man Was Appointed By God To Have Dominion Over The Beasts, And Everything A Man Does To An Animal Is Either A Lawful Exercise Or A Sacrilegious Abuse Of An Authority By Divine Right.

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

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

Excess Of Love, Did Ye Say? There Was No Excess, There Was Defect. She Loved Her Son Too Little, Not Too Much. If She Had Loved Him More There'd Be No Difficulty.

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

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

Enemy Occupied Territory Is What The World Is.

Non-christians Seem To Think That The Incarnation Implies Some Particular Merit Or Excellence In Humanity. But Of Course It Implies Just The Reverse: A Particular Demerit And Depravity. No Creature That Deserved Redemption Would Need To Be Redeemed. They That Are Whole Need Not The Physician. Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

They Open A Door And Enter A World

The Christians Say That God Has Done Miracles. The Modern World, Even When It Believes In God, And Even When It Has See The Defenselessness Of Nature, Does Not. It Thinks God Would Not Do That Sort Of Thing.

It Is That Of An Unsatisfied Desire Which Is Itself More Desirable Than Any Other Satisfaction.

Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills.

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

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.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

There Have Been Times When I Think We Do Not Desire Heaven But More Often I Find Myself Wondering Whether, In Our Heart Of Hearts, We Have Ever Desired Anything Else.

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

As The King Governs By His Executive, So Reason In Man Must Rule The Mere Appetites By Means Of The 'spirited Element.'

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

Of All Tyrannies A Tyranny Sincerely Exercised For The Good Of Its Victims May Be The Most Oppressive.

This Is My Endlessly Recurrent Temptation: To Go Down To That Sea, And There Neither Dive Nor Swim Nor Float, But Only Dabble And Splash, Careful Not To Get Out Of My Depth And Holding On To The Lifeline Which Connects Me With My Things Temporal.

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

The Human Mind Has No More Power Of Inventing A New Value Than Of Planting A New Sun In The Sky Or A New Primary Color In The Spectrum.

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

Affection Would Not Be Affection If It Was Loudly And Frequently Expressed; To Produce It In Public Is Like Getting Your Household Furniture Out For A Move. It Did Very Well In Its Place, But It Looks Shabby Or Tawdry Or Grotesque In The Sunshine.

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

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did, He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is)... Continue Seeking Him With Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

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

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

One Of Our Great Allies At Present Is The Church Itself. Do Not Misunderstand Me. I Do Not Mean The Church As We See Her Spread Out Through All Time And Space And Rooted In Eternity, Terrible As An Army With Banners. That, I Confess, Is A Spectacle Which Makes Our Boldest Tempters Uneasy. But Fortunately It Is Quite Invisible To These Humans.

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