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It Is A Serious Thing To Live In A Society Of Possible Gods And Goddesses. To Remember That The Dullest, And Most Uninteresting Person You Can Talk To May One Day Be A Creature Which, If You Saw It Now, You Would Be Strongly Tempted To Worship.
-C. S. Lewis
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It Is A Serious

C. S. Lewis
It Is A Serious Thing To Live In A Society Of Possible Gods And Goddesses. To Remember That The Dullest, And Most Uninteresting Person You Can Talk To May One Day Be A Creature Which, If You Saw It Now, You Would Be Strongly Tempted To Worship.
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Serious Things
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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.
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And Men Said That The Blood Of The Stars Flowed In Her Veins
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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.
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No Man Who Says, 'i'm As Good As You,' Believes It. He Would Not Say It If He Did.
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The Old Field Of Space, Time, Matter, And The Senses Is To Be Weeded, Dug, And Sown For A New Crop. We May Be Tired Of That Old Field: God Is Not.
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Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.
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May
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Sexual Appetite, Like Any Other Appetite, Grows By Indulgence
Appetite
Grows
Indulgence
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Two
Rabbits
Three
Christian Theology Can Fit In Science, Art, Morality, And The Sub-christian Religious. The Scientific Point Of View Cannot Fit Any Of These Things, Not Even Science Itself.
Christian
Religious
Art
Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Believe In A Certain Way, And Can't Really Get Rid Of It.
Wisdom
Believe
Ideas
We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.
Reading
Lovely
Knows
Nobody Who Gets Enough Food And Clothing In A World Where Most Are Hungry And Cold Has Any Business To Talk About 'misery.'
World
Misery
Cold
Once A King In Narnia, Always A King In Narnia. But Don't Go Trying To Use The Same Route Twice. Indeed, Don't Try To Get There At All. It'll Happen When You're Not Looking For It. And Don't Talk Too Much About It Even Among Yourselves. And Don't Mention It To Anyone Else Unless You Find That They've Had Adventures Of The Same Sort Themselves. What's That? How Will You Know? Oh, You'll Know All Right. Odd Things, They Say-even Their Looks-will Let The Secret Out. Keep Your Eyes Open. Bless Me, What Do They Teach Them At These Schools." -the Profesor
Kings
School
Adventure
The Story Itself Should Force Its Moral Upon You. You Find Out What The Moral Is By Writing The Story.
Writing
Stories
Moral
It's Not A Question Of God 'sending' Us To Hell. In Each Of Us There Is Something Growing Up Which Will Of Itself Be Hell Unless It Is Nipped In The Bud.
Growing Up
Grumbling
Bud
If The Immutable Heart Can Be Grieved By The Puppets Of Its Own Making, It Is Divine Omnipotence, No Other, That Has Subjected It, Freely, And In A Humility That Passes Understanding. If The World Exists Not Chiefly That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us, Yet That Very Fact, On A Deeper Level, Is So For Our Sakes. If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.
Heart
Humility
Omnipotence
It Was Not For Societies Or States, That Christ Died, But For Men.
Men
Christ
States
It Was A Full Moon And, Shining On All The Snow, It Made Everything Almost As Bright As Day -- Only The Shadows Were Rather Confusing.
Moon
Snow
Shining
The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.
Inspirational
Doors
Lasts
Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, '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. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.
Inspirational
Dream
Religious
When First Things Are Put First, Second Things Are Not Suppressed But Increased.
Firsts
Put First Things First
First Things First
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.
Prayer
Order
House
For Narnia And For Aslan!
Narnia
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Lion Witch Wardrobe
The Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).
Heart
Eye
Recognition
If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe A Price Worth Paying For Free Will...then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.
War
Thinking
May
This Is Where Men, Even The Trustiest, Fail Us. Their Heart Is Never So Wholly Given To Any Matter But That Some Trifle Of A Meal, Or A Drink, Or A Sleep, Or A Joke, Or A Girl, May Come In Between Them And It, And Then (even If You Are A Queen) You'll Get No More Good Out Of Them Until They've Had Their Way.
Girl
Queens
Heart
If You Are Really A Product Of A Materialistic Universe, How Is It That You Don't Feel At Home There?
Wisdom
Atheist
Home
The Enemy Will Not See You Vanish Into God's Company Without An Effort To Reclaim You.
Effort
Enemy
Company
You Must See That If Two Things Are Alike, Then It Is A Further Question Whether The First Is Copied From The Second, Or The Second From The First, Or Both From A Third.
Two
Firsts
Thirds
When I Have Learned To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now.
Love
Marriage
Valentines Day
The Whole Difficulty Of Understanding Hell Is That The Thing To Be Understood Is So Nearly Nothing.
Inspirational
Religious
Understanding
The Laws Of Thought Are Also The Laws Of Things: Of Things In The Remotest Space And The Remotest Time.
Time
Law
Space
In The Truest Sense, Christian Pilgrims Have The Best Of Both Worlds. We Have Joy Whenever This World Reminds Us Of The Next, And We Take Solace Whenever It Does Not.
Christian
Joy
Doe
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.
Inspirational
Religious
Hands
Good People Know About Both Good And Evil: Bad People Do Not Know About Either.
People
Evil
Arithmetic
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.
Differences
Religion
Making A Difference
Most Of All, Perhaps, We Need An Intimate Knowledge Of The Past. Not That The Past Has Anything Magical About It, But We Cannot Study The Future.
Past
Needs
Study
If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.
Trying
Gleam
Way
Christ Offers Something For Nothing: He Even Offers Everything For Nothing.
Christ
Offers
He Came To This World And Became A Man In Order To Spread To Other Men The Kind Of Life He Has - By What I Call 'good Infection'. Every Christian Is To Become A Little Christ. The Whole Purpose Of Becoming A Christian Is Simply Nothing Else.
Christian
Men
Order
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.
Real
Support
Political
[god] Will Not Be Used As A Convenience. Men Or Nations Who Think They Can Revive The Faith In Order To Make A Good Society Might Just As Well Think They Can Use The Stairs Of Heaven As A Shortcut To The Nearest Chemist's Shop.
Faith
Men
Thinking
I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.
Book
Reading
Men
The Modern Idea Of A Great Man Is One Who Stands At The Lonely Extremity Of Some Single Line Of Development--
Lonely
Men
Ideas
Narnia! It's All In The Wardrobe Just Like I Told You!
Narnia
Lion Witch Wardrobe
Wardrobe
Nothing Is More Likely To Destroy A Species Or A Nation Than A Determination To Survive At All Costs
Determination
Cost
Species
You Would Not Have Called To Me Unless I Had Been Calling To You," Said The Lion.
Religion
Calling
Lions
Do Not Dare Not To Dare.
Life
Religion
Dare
If You Have A Religion It Must Be Cosmic.
Omnipotence
Cosmic
Ifs
The Harder You Tried Not To Think, The More You Thought.
Thinking
Harder
Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.
Men
Thinking
Democracy
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.
School
Men
Good Man
He Died Not For Men, But For Each Man. If Each Man Had Been The Only Man Made, He Would Have Done No Less.
Men
Religion
Done
If We Cut Up Beasts Simply Because They Cannot Prevent Us And Because We Are Backing Our Own Side In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only Logical To Cut Up Imbeciles, Criminals, Enemies, Or Capitalists For The Same Reasons.
Wisdom
Struggle
Cutting
The Mark Of Friendship Is Not That Help Will Be Given When The Pinch Comes (of Course It Will) But That, Having Been Given, It Makes No Difference At All.
Differences
Helping
Given
Don't Say It Was "delightful"; Make Us Say "delightful" When We've Read The Description.
Writing
Description
Delightful
There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'
Inspirational
God
Dedication
The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Men, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.
Men
Liberation
Divine Mercy
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.
Depression
God
Christian
The Incalculable Winds Of Fantasy And Music And Poetry, The Mere Face Of A Girl, The Song Of A Bird, Or The Sight Of A Horizon, Are Always Blowing Evil’s Whole Structure Away.
Girl
Song
Sight
Many A Man, Brought Up In The Glib Profession Of Some Shallow Form Of Christianity, Who Comes Through Reading Astronomy To Realize For The First Time How Majestically Indifferent Most Reality Is To Man, And Who Perhaps Abandons His Religion On That Account, May At That Moment Be Having His First Genuinely Religious Experience.
Religious
Reading
Reality
What We Have Been Told Is How We Men Can Be Drawn Into Christ-can Become Part Of That Wonderful Present Which The Young Prince Of The Universe Wants To Offer To His Father-that Present Which Is Himself And Therefore Us In Him. It Is The Only Thing We Were Made For. And There Are Strange, Exciting Hints In The Bible That When We Are Drawn In, A Great Many Other Things In Nature Will Begin To Come Right. The Bad Dream Will Be Over: It Will Be Morning.
Dream
Morning
Father
God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers. If You Are Thinking Of Becoming A Christian, I Warn You You Are Embarking On Something Which Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.
Christian
Thinking
Intellectual
The Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal.
Inspirational
Laughing
Together
Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends?
Christian
Circles
Earth
To Forgive The Incessant Provocations Of Daily Life - To Keep On Forgiving The Bossy Mother-in-law, The Bullying Husband, The Nagging Wife, The Selfish Daughter, The Deceitful Son - How Can We Do It? Only, I Think, By Remembering Where We Stand, By Meaning Our Words When We Say In Our Prayers Each Night, “forgive Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us.” We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse God’s Mercy For Ourselves. There Is No Hint Of Exceptions And God Means What He Says.
Daughter
Mother
Bullying
I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.
Screwtape Letters
Ought
Unless The Religious Claims Of The Bible Are Again Acknowledged, Its Literary Claims Will, I Think, Be Given Only 'mouth Honour' And That Decreasingly.
Religious
Thinking
Mouths
They Open A Door And Enter A World
Doors
World
Keep Clear Of Psychiatrists Unless You Know That They Are Also Christians. Otherwise They Start With The Assumption That Your Religion Is An Illusion And Try To 'cure' It: And This Assumption They Make Not As Professional Psychologists But As Amateur Philosophers.
Christian
Trying
Philosopher
"welcome, Prince," Said Aslan. "do You Feel Yourself Sufficient To Take Up The Kingship Of Narnia?" "i - I Don't Think I Do, Sir," Said Caspian. "i'm Only A Kid." "good," Said Aslan. "if You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not."
Kids
Thinking
Welcome
Besides Being Complicated, Reality, In My Experience, Is Usually Odd. It Is Not Neat, Not Obvious, Not What You Expect.
Reality
Complicated
Odd
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.
Real
Men
Talking
God, In The End, Gives People What They Most Want, Including Freedom From Himself. What Could Be More Fair?
Christian
People
Giving
Always Winter But Never Christmas.
Christmas
Winter
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.
Strange
Sin
Illusion
Your Real, New Self (which Is Christ's And Also Yours, And Yours Just Because It Is His) Will Not Come As Long As You Are Looking For It. It Will Come When You Are Looking For Him.
Real
Self
Long
But Now I Discovered The Wonderful Power Of Wine. I Understood Why Men Become Drunkards. For The Way It Worked On Me Was Not At All That It Blotted Out These Sorrows, But That It Made Them Seem Glorious And Noble, Like Sad Music, And I Somehow Great And Revered For Feeling Them.
Wine
Men
Feelings
For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.
God
Creatures
Seems
For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.
Prayer
Waiting
Mountain
Many People Think Their Prayers Are Never Answered Because It Is The Answered Ones They Forget.
Prayer
Thinking
People
It Is A Poor Thing To Strike Our Colors To God When The Ship Is Going Down Under Us; A Poor Thing To Come To Him As A Last Resort, To Offer Up 'our Own' When It Is No Longer Worth Keeping. If God Were Proud He Would Hardly Have Us On Such Terms: But He Is Not Proud, He Stoops To Conquer, He Will Have Us Even Though We Have Shown That We Prefer Everything Else To Him.
Color
Lasts
Ships
'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.
Inspirational
Being In Love
Promise
The More Imagination The Reader Has ... The More He Will Do For Himself. He Will, At A Mere Hint From The Author, Flood Wretched Material With Suggestion And Never Guess That He Is Himself Chiefly Making What He Enjoys.
Imagination
Suggestions
Hints
God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks To Us In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains.
Christian
Pain
Speak
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.
Law
Giving
Tasks
God Whispers In Our Pleasures, But Shouts In Our Pain.
Pain
Pleasure
Pain And Pleasure
I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road. A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Til You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On. Evil Can Be Undone, But It Cannot 'develop' Into Good. Time Does Not Heal It. The Spell Must Be Unwound, Bit By Bit, 'with Backward Mutters Of Dissevering Power' --or Else Not.
Thinking
Errors
Evil
I Cannot Speak For The Way God Deals With Others; I Only Know How He Deals With Me Personally.
Way
Speak
Deals
She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.
Doe
Should
Sensible
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.
Writing
Trying
Pieces
Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.
Eye
Reality
Endless
There Is One Bit Of Advice Given Us By The Ancient Greeks, And By The Jews In The Old Testament, And By The Great Christian Teachers Of The Middle Ages, Which The Modern Economic System Has Completely Disobeyed. All These People Told Us Not To Lend Money At Interest; And Lending Money At Interest - What We Call Investment - Is The Basis Of Our Whole System.
Christian
Teacher
People
Long Before History Began We Men Have Got Together Apart From The Women And Done Things. We Had Time.
Men
Long
Together
Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.
Age
Youth
Surface
There Is One Vice Of Which No Man In The World Is Free; Which Every One In The World Loathes When He Sees It In Someone Else; And Of Which Hardly Any People, Except Christians, Ever Imagine That They Are Guilty Themselves. […] There Is No Fault Which Makes A Man More Unpopular, And No Fault Which We Are More Unconscious Of In Ourselves.[…]the Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility.
Christian
Humility
Pride
I Have Swallowed Up Girls And Boys, Women And Men, Kings And Emperors, Cities And Realms," Said The Lion. It Didn't Say This As If It Were Boasting, Nor As If It Were Sorry, Nor As If It Were Angry. It Just Said It.
Girl
Kings
Sorry
As A Christian I Take It For Granted That Human History Will Some Day End; And I Am Offering Omniscience No Advice As To The Best Date For That Consummation.
Christian
Offering
Advice
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.
Cost
Impulse
Dangerous
We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, 'blessed Are They That Mourn,' And I Accept It. I've Got Nothing That I Hadn't Bargained For. Of Course It Is Different When The Thing Happens To Oneself, Not To Others, And In Reality, Not Imagination.
Grief
Blessed
Reality
I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.
Believe
Luxury
Giving
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.
Play
Water
Inquiry
To Get Even Near Humility, Even For A Moment, Is Like A Drink Of Cold Water To A Man In A Desert.
Humility
Men
Water
You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.
Friendship
Funny Best Friend
Real Friends
A Man's Physical Hunger Does Not Prove That Man Will Get Any Bread; He May Die Of Starvation On A Raft In The Atlantic. But Surely A Man's Hunger Does Prove That He Comes Of A Race Which Repairs Its Body By Eating And Inhabits A World Where Eatable Substances Exist. In The Same Way, Though I Do Not Believe (i Wish I Did) 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.
Believe
Men
Thinking
If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business.
Wisdom
Hands
Would Be
By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!
Wish
Gum
Enough
Every Object You See Before You At This Moment -the Walls, Ceiling, And Furniture, The Book, Your Own Washed Hands And Cut Fingernails, Bears Witness To The Colonization Of Nature Of Reason.
Wall
Book
Cutting
Gratitude Exclaims, Very Properly, 'how Good Of God To Give Me This.'
Gratitude
Giving
Give Me
What Can You Ever Really Know Of Other People's Souls — Of Their Temptations, Their Opportunities, Their Struggles? One Soul In The Whole Of Creation You Do Know: And It Is The Only One Whose Fate Is Placed In Your Hands. If There Is A God, You Are, In A Sense, Alone With Him.
Struggle
Fate
Opportunity
A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.
Powerful
Eye
Moon
God Gives His Gifts Where He Finds The Vessel Empty Enough To Receive Them.
Giving
Empty
Enough
Onward And Upward! To Narnia And The North!
Onward And Upward
Narnia
Life With God Is Not Immunity From Difficulties, But Peace In Difficulties.
Difficulty
Immunity
And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.
Children
Men
Midnight
The Best Fruits Are Plucked For Each By Some Hand That Is Not His Own.
Hands
Fruit
Once A Man Is United To God, How Could He Not Live Forever?
Spiritual
Men
Forever
To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are 'on' Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.
Play
Scene
Concern
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.
Girl
Writing
Boys
You Know Me Better Than You Think, You Know, And You Shall Know Me Better Yet.
Thinking
You Think You Know
Know Me
The Fact That Our Heart Yearns For Something Earth Can't Supply Is Proof That Heaven Must Be Our Home.
Home
Heart
Heaven
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.
Wisdom
Grief
Yawning
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

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

1. Defining Quotes

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


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

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


2.2. Providing Evidence

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


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

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


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

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


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

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


3.3. Block Quotes

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



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

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


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

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


4.3. Attribution and Citation

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


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

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


5.2. Lack of Analysis

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


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

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



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

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


6.2. Journalism

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


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

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



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


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


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



8. Ethical Considerations


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

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


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



Conclusion


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


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