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It Means That Though The Witch Knew The Deep Magic, There Is A Magic Deeper Still That She Did Not Know. Her Knowledge Goes Back Only To The Dawn Of Time. But If She Could Have Looked A Little Further Back, Into The Stillness And Darkness Before Time Began, She Would Have Read There A Different Incantation. She Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor's Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Work Backwards.

-C. S. Lewis

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It Means That Though

C. S. Lewis

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It Means That Though The Witch Knew The Deep Magic, There Is A Magic Deeper Still That She Did Not Know. Her Knowledge Goes Back Only To The Dawn Of Time. But If She Could Have Looked A Little Further Back, Into The Stillness And Darkness Before Time Began, She Would Have Read There A Different Incantation. She Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor's Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Work Backwards.

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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.

Our Desire Is Not Only To See Glory, But To Participate In The Glory We See.

The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

Anyone Who Endeavors To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened. You Are Embarking On Something That Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

Temperance Referred Not Abstaining, But Going The Right Length And No Further...of Course It May Be The Duty Of A Particular Christian, Or Any Christian, At A Particular Time, To Abstain From Strong Drink, Either Because He Is The Sort Of Man Who Cannot Drink At All Without Drinking Too Much, Or Because He Wants To Give The Money To The Poor, Or Because He Is With People Who Are Inclined To Drunkenness And Must Not Encourage Them By Drinking Himself. But The Whole Point He Is Abstaining, For A Good Reason, From Something He Does Not Condemn And Which He Likes To See Other People Enjoying.

Gratitude Looks To The Past And Love To The Present; Fear, Avarice, Lust, And Ambition Look Ahead.

How Could An Idiotic Universe Have Produced Creatures Whose Mere Dreams Are So Much Stronger, Better, Subtler Than Itself?

I Wonder Do The Gods Know What It Feels Like To Be A Man.

Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

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.

What Do People Mean When They Say, 'i Am Not Afraid Of God Because I Know He Is Good'? Have They Never Even Been To A Dentist?

Authority Exercised With Humility, And Obedience Accepted With Delight Are The Very Lines Along Which Our Spirits Live.

And That's Why, When They Want To Get Rid Of Anyone, They Usually Bring Him Down Here (like They Were Doing With Me) And Say They'll Leave Him To The Ghosts. But I Always Wondered If They Didn't Really Drown 'em Or Cut Their Throats. I Never Quite Believed In The Ghosts. But Those Two Cowards You've Just Shot Believed All Right. They Were More Scared Of Taking Me To My Death Than I Was Of Going.

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.

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

The Modern Idea Of A Great Man Is One Who Stands At The Lonely Extremity Of Some Single Line Of Development--

One Is Sometimes Glad Not To Be A Great Theologian; One Might Easily Mistake It For Being A Good Christian.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You ‘love’ Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did. As Soon As We Do This We Find One Of The Great Secrets. When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him.

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

A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.

Screwtape Letters

I Need Christ, Not Something That Resembles Him.

The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred

The Point Is That For Our Ancestors, The Universe Was A Picture; For Modern Physics It Is A Story.

While Friendship Has Been By Far The Chief Source Of My Happiness, Acquaintance Or General Society Has Always Meant Little To Me, And I Cannot Quite Understand Why A Man Should Wish To Know More People Than He Can Make Real Friends Of.

You People Have No Imagination!

The Standard That Measures Two Things Is Something Different From Either. You Are, In Fact, Comparing Them Both With Some Real Morality, Admitting That There Is Such A Thing As A Real Right, Independent Of What People Think, And That Some People's Ideas Get Nearer To That Real Right Than Others.

Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

The Full Acting Out Of The Self's Surrender To God Therefore Demands Pain: This Action, To Be Perfect, Must Be Done From The Pure Will To Obey, In The Absence, Or In The Teeth, Of Inclination

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.

A Moderately Bad Man Knows He Is Not Very Good: A Thoroughly Bad Man Thinks He Is Alright. This Is Common Sense Really. You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not Well You Are Sleeping.

Let Me Make It Quite Clear That When Christians Say The Christ-life Is In Them, They Do Not Mean Simply Something Mental Or Moral. When They Speak Of Being "in Christ" Or Of Christ Being "in Them", This Is Not Simply A Way Of Saying That They Are Thinking About Christ Or Copying Him. They Mean That Christ Is Actually Operating Through Them; That The Whole Mass Of Christians Are The Physical Organism Through Which Christ Acts--that We Are His Fingers And Muscles, The Cells Of His Body.

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.

Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

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 Great Thing To Remember Is That Though Our Feelings Come And Go God's Love For Us Does Not.

Christian Inspirational

I Read In A Periodical The Other Day That The Fundamental Thing Is How We Think Of God. By God Himself, It Is Not! How God Thinks Of Us Is Not Only More Important, But Infinitely More Important.

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

No Mind Is So Good That It Does Not Need Another Mind To Counter And Equal It, And To Save It From Conceit And Bigotry And Folly

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

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

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

The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

Jesus Produced Mainly Three Effects: Hatred, Terror, Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Approval.

You Can't Know, You Can Only Believe - Or Not.

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

She Looked At A Silver Birch: It Would Have A Soft, Showery Voice And Would Look Like A Slender Girl, With Hair Blown All About Her Face And Fond Of Dancing. She Looked At The Oak: He Would Be A Wizened, But Hearty, Old Man With A Frizzled Beard And Warts On His Fact And Hands, With Hair Growing Out Of The Warts. She Looked At The Beech Under Which She Was Standing. Ah! --she Would Be The Best Of All. She Would Be A Gracious Goddess, Smooth And Stately, The Lady Of The Wood.

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

God Knows Our Situation; He Will Not Judge Us As If We Had No Difficulties To Overcome. What Matters Is The Sincerity And Perseverance Of Our Will To Overcome Them.

I Wish They Would Remember That The Charge To Peter Was "feed My Sheep", Not "try Experiments On My Rats", Or Even "teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks".

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

Thirty Was So Strange For Me. I've Really Had To Come To Terms With The Fact That I Am Now A Walking And Talking Adult.

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.

I Have Often Repented Of Speech But Hardly Ever Of Silence.

It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.

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.

Once In Our World, A Stable Had Something In It That Was Bigger Than Our Whole World.

For Pride Is Spiritual Cancer: It Eats Up The Very Possibility Of Love, Or Contentment, Or Even Common Sense.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

We Have Failed To Practise Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

No Emotion Is, In Itself, A Judgement; In That Sense All Emotions And Sentiments Are Alogical. But They Can Be Reasonable Or Unreasonable As They Conform To Reason Or Fail To Conform. The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

All Your Life An Unattainable Ecstasy Has Hovered Just Beyond The Grasp Of Your Consciousness.

So That The One Road For Which We Now Need God's Leadership Most Of All Is A Road God, In His Own Nature, Has Never Walked. But Suppose God Became A Man... He Could Surrender His Will, Suffer And Die, Because He Was A Man.

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

The Higher The Stakes, The Greater The Temptation To Lose Your Temper.

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons; And I'm Not Sure That Old Age Isn't The Best Part Of Life.

I Think He Made One Law Of That Kind In Order That There Might Be Obedience. In All These Other Matters What You Call Obeying Him Is But Doing What Seems Good In Your Own Eyes Also. Is Love Content With That?

I Was Wondering — I Mean — Could There Be Some Mistake? Because Nobody Called Me And Scrubb, You Know. It Was We Who Asked To Come Here. You Would Not Have Called Me Unless I Had Been Calling You.

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

We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.

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

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest.

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.

All The Things That Have Ever Deeply Possessed Your Soul Have Been But Hints Of It, Tantalizing Glimpses, Promises Never Quite Fulfilled, Echoes That Died Away Just As They Caught Your Ear. But If It Should Really Become Manifest - If There Ever Came An Echo That Did Not Die Away But Swelled Into The Sound Itself - You Would Know It. Beyond All Possibility Of Doubt You Would Say 'here At Last Is The Thing I Was Made For.'

It Doesn't Really Matter Whether You Grip The Arms Of The Dentist's Chair Or Let Your Hands Lie In Your Lap. The Drill Drills On.

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

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

Be Sure It Is Not For Nothing That The Landlord Has Knit Our Hearts So Closely To Time And Place – To One Friend Rather Than Another And One Shire More That All The Land.

Did I Hate Him, Then? Indeed, I Believe So. A Love Like That Can Grow To Be Nine-tenths Hatred And Still Call Itself Love.

To Have Faith In Christ Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice.

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

That Part Of Rostrevor Which Overlooks Carlingford Lough Is My Idea Of Narnia.

The Only Way To Drive Out Bad Culture Is To Create Good Culture. We Need To Recognize That Artistic Talent Is A Gift From The Lord - And That Developing Those Talents Is The Only Way To Create Good Culture.

To Be Ignorant And Simple Now-not To Be Able To Meet The Enemies On Their Own Ground-would Be To Throw Down Our Weapons And To Betray Our Uneducated Brethren Who Have, Under God, No Defense But Us Against The Intellectual Attacks Of The Heathen. Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

Where, Except In The Present, Can The Eternal Be Met?

He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.

I Know Now, Lord, Why You Utter No Answer. You Are Yourself The Answer. Before Your Face Questions Die Away. What Other Answer Would Suffice?

God Is Basic Fact. He Must Not Be Thought Of As A Featureless Generality. He Is The Most Concrete Thing There Is.

You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not While You Are Sleeping. You Can See Mistakes In Arithmetic When Your Mind Is Working Properly; While You Are Making Them You Cannot See Them. Good People Know About Both Bad And Evil; Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

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

The Christian Is In A Different Position From Other People Who Are Trying To Be Good. They Hope, By Being Good, To Please God If There Is One; Or — If They Think There Is Not — At Least They Hope To Deserve Approval From Good Men. But The Christian Thinks Any Good He Does Comes From The Christ-life Inside Him. He Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us; Just As The Roof Of A Greenhouse Does Not Attract The Sun Because It Is Bright, But Becomes Bright Because The Sun Shines On It.

But Who Can Feel Ugly, When Their Heart Feels Joy

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When A Single Particular Person Claims To A Different: 'what! You Far Too? I Assumed I Was The Only Real One Particular.

The Prayer Preceding All Prayers Is 'may It Be The Real I Who Speaks. May It Be The Real Thou That I Speak To.'

If I Had Really Cared As I Thought I Did About The Sorrows Of The World I Should Not Have Been So Overwhelmed When My Own Sorrow Came- I Thought I Trusted The Rope Until It Mattered To Me Whether It Would Bear Me, Now It Matters And I Find I Didn't.

A Man Who Is Eating Or Lying With His Wife Or Preparing To Go To Sleep In Humility, Thankfulness And Temperance, Is, By Christian Standards, In An Infinitely Higher State Than One Who Is Listening To Bach Or Reading Plato In A State Of Pride.

This Is One Of The Miracles Of Love: It Gives A Power Of Seeing Through Its Own Enchantments And Yet Not Being Disenchanted.

It Is So Fatally Easy To Confuse An Aesthetic Appreciation Of The Spiritual Life With The Life Itself-to Dream That You Have Waked, Washed, And Dressed And Then To Find Yourself Still In Bed.

If Each Side Had Been Frankly Contending For Its Own Real Wish, They Would All Have Kept Within The Bounds Of Reason And Courtesy; But Just Because The Contention Is Reversed And Each Side Is Fighting The Other Side’s Battle, All The Bitterness Which Really Flows From Thwarted Self-righteousness And Obstinacy And From The Accumulated Grudges Of The Last Ten Years Is Concealed From Them By The Nominal Or Official "unselfishness" Of What They Are Doing Or, At Least, Held To Be Excused By It.

In Those Days Mr. Sherlock Holmes Was Still Living In Baker Street And The Bastables Were Looking For Treasure In The Lewisham Road.

Other Than Heaven, The Only Place Where One's Heart Is Completely Safe From The Dangers Of Love Is Hell.

Girls Aren't Very Good At Keeping Maps In Their Brains", Said Edmund, "that's Because We've Got Something In Them", Replied Lucy.

If A Man Thinks He Is Not Conceited, He Is Very Conceited Indeed.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted. And If An Infinitely Wise Being Listens To The Requests Of Finite And Foolish Creatures, Of Course He Will Sometimes Grant And Sometimes Refuse Them.

I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

If You Ask Why We Should Obey God, In The Last Resort The Answer Is, 'i Am.' To Know God Is To Know That Our Obedience Is Due To Him.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.

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

I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.

You Can't Just Go On Being A Good Egg. You Must Either Hatch Or Go Bad!

The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One - The Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts.

Thought Provoking

You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.

But The Most Obvious Fact About Praise — Whether Of God Or Anything — Strangely Escaped Me. I Thought Of It In Terms Of Compliment, Approval, Or The Giving Of Honor. I Had Never Noticed That All Enjoyment Spontaneously Overflows Into Praise Unless (sometimes Even If) Shyness Or The Fear Of Boring Others Is Deliberately Brought In To Check It.

A Great Many Of Those Who 'debunk' Traditional...values Have In The Background Values Of Their Own Which They Believe To Be Immune From The Debunking Process

A Perfect Man Would Never Act From A Sense Of Duty; He’d Always Want The Right Thing More Than The Wrong One. Duty Is Only A Substitute For Love (of God And Of Other People) Like A Crutch Which Is A Substitute For A Leg. Most Of Us Need The Crutch At Times; But Of Course It Is Idiotic To Use The Crutch When Our Own Legs (our Own Loves, Tastes, Habits Etc.) Can Do The Journey On Their Own.

The Hard Sayings Of Our Lord Are Wholesome To Those Only Who Find Them Hard.

Theology Offers You A Working Arrangement, Which Leaves The Scientist Free To Continue His Experiments And The Christian To Continue His Prayers.

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is). What Is Going On In You At Present Is Simply The Beginning Of The Treatment. Continue Seeking With Cheerful Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

His Face Had Become Very Red And His Mouth And Fingers Were Sticky. He Did Not Look Either Clever Or Handsome, Whatever The Queen Might Say.

The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

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

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

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

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.

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

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

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom.

[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.

By Repenting, One Acknowledges Them As Sins-therefore Not To Be Repeated.

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

Slowly, Quietly, Like Snow-flakes—like The Small Flakes That Come When It Is Going To Snow All Night —little Flakes Of Me, My Impressions, My Selections, Are Settling Down On The Image Of Her. The Real Shape Wil Be Quite Hidden In The End.

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness. We Need Others Physically, Emotionally, And Intellectually. We Need Them If We Are To Know Anything, Even Ourselves.

It's Like The Sound Of A Chuckle In The Darkness. The Sense That Some Shattering And Disarming Simplicity Is The Real Answer.

The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.

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

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves.

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

No Good Work Is Done Anywhere Without Aid From The Father Of Lights.

Friendship Exhibits A Glorious "nearness By Resemblance" To Heaven Itself Where The Very Multitude Of The Blessed (which No Man Can Number) Increases The Fruition Which Each Has Of God. For Every Soul, Seeing Him In Her Own Way, Doubtless Communicates That Unique Vision To All The Rest. That, Says An Old Author, Is Why The Seraphim In Isaiah's Vision Are Crying "holy, Holy, Holy" To One Another (isaiah Vi, 3). The More We Thus Share The Heavenly Bread Between Us, The More We Shall All Have.

It Is Always The Novice Who Exaggerates.

Screwtape Letters

Grief Is Like A Bomber Circling Round And Dropping Its Bombs Each Time The Circle Brings It Overhead; Physical Pain Is Like The Steady Barrage On A Trench In World War One, Hours If It With No Let-up For A Moment. Thought Is Never Static Pain Often Is... Is It Not Yet Enough?

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

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

Every Sin Is The Distortion Of An Energy Breathed Into Us.

To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are 'on' Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

If You Find That The Reader Of Popular Romances--however Uneducated A Reader, However Bad The Romances--goes Back To His Old Favourites Again And Again, Then You Have Pretty Good Evidence That They Are To Him A Sort Of Poetry.

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

You Don't Have A Soul. You Are A Soul. You Have A Body.

“who Are You?” One Who Has Waited Long For You To Speak.

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.

I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.

Though No One Would Want To Be Sold As A Slave, It Is Perhaps Even More Galling To Be A Sort Of Utility Slave Whom No One Will Buy.

If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.

Now That I Am A Christian I Do Have Moods In Which The Whole Thing Looks Improbable: But When I Was An Atheist I Had Moods In Which Christianity Looked Terribly Probable.

There Is No Doctrine Which I Would More Willingly Remove From Christianity Than The Doctrine Of Hell, If It Lay In My Power. But It Has The Support Of Scripture And, Especially, Of Our Lord's Own Words; It Has Always Been Held By The Christian Church, And It Has The Support Of Reason.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

But All Night, Aslan And The Moon Gazed Upon Each Other With Joyful And Unblinking Eyes.

The Knight Is A Man Of Blood And Iron, A Man Familiar With The Sight Of Smashed Faces And The Ragged Stumps Of Lopped-off Limbs; He Is Also A Demure, Almost A Maidenlike, Guest In Hall, A Gentle, Modest, Unobtrusive Man. He Is Not A Compromise Or Happy Mean Between Ferocity And Meekness; He Is Fierce To The Nth And Meek To The Nth.

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.

Strictly Speaking, There Are No Such Things As Good And Bad Impulses. Think...of A Piano. It Has Not Got Two Kinds Of Notes On It, The 'right' Notes And The 'wrong' Ones. Every Single Note Is Right At One Time And Wrong At Another. The Moral Law Is Not Any One Instinct Or Set Of Instincts: It Is Something Which Makes A Kind Of Tune (the Tune We Call Goodness Or Right Conduct) By Directing The Instincts.

Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.

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

There Was A Boy Called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, And He Almost Deserved It.

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

If You Examined A Hundred People Who Had Lost Their Faith In Christianity, I Wonder How Many Of Them Would Turn Out To Have Reasoned Out Of It By Honest Argument? Do Not Most People Simply Drift Away?

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues.

When They Have Really Learned To Love Their Neighbours As Themselves, They Will Be Allowed To Love Themselves As Their Neighbours.

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It Takes All Sorts To Make A World; Or A Church. This May Be Even Truer Of A Church. If Grace Perfects Nature It Must Expand All Our Natures Into The Full Richness Of The Diversity Which God Intended When He Made Them, And Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

To Please God… To Be A Real Ingredient In The Divine Happiness… To Be Loved By God, Not Merely Pitied, But Delighted In As An Artist Delights In His Work Or A Father In A Son- It Seems Impossible, A Weight Or Burden Of Glory Which Our Thoughts Can Hardly Sustain. But So It Is.

Friends Are Seldom Found; They Are Made.

I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait.

Friendship Is The Instrument By Which God Reveals To Each Of Us The Beauties Of Others.

You Know Me Better Than You Think, You Know, And You Shall Know Me Better Yet.

You Think You Know

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.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.

Every Uncorrected Error And Unrepented Sin Is, In Its Own Right, A Fountain Of Fresh Error And Fresh Sin Flowing On To The End Of Time.

There Is A Kind Of Happiness And Wonder That Makes You Serious. It Is Too Good To Waste On Jokes.

Humility, After The First Shock, Is Cheerful Virtue.

Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Had Yet Been Done.

Scripture Itself Is Not Systematic; The New Testament Shows The Greatest Variety. God Has Shown Us That He Can Use Any Instrument. Balaam's Ass, You Remember, Preached A Very Effective Sermon In The Midst Of His 'hee-haws.'

A Christian Society Is Not Going To Arrive Until Most Of Us Really Want It: And We Are Not Going To Want It Until We Become Fully Christian. I May Repeat "do As You Would Be Done By" Till I Am Black In The Fact, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbour As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbour As Myself Till I Learn To Love God.

It Is A Dreadful Truth That The State Of Having To Depend Solely On God Is What We All Dread Most.... It Is Good Of Him To Force Us; But Dear Me, How Hard To Feel That It Is Good At The Time.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

I Came Alive When I Started Loving You.

...the Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal, Or Two Friends Talking Over A Pint Of Beer, Or A Man Alone Reading A Book That Interests Him..." - C.s. Lewis: Weight Of Glory

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

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It May Well Be That By Trickery Of Priests Men Have Sometimes Taken A Mortal's Voice For A God's. But It Will Not Work The Other Way. No One Who Hears A God's Voice Takes It For A Man's.

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

If These Holy Places, Things, And Days Cease To Remind Us, If They Obliterate Our Awareness That All Ground Is Holy And Every Bush (could We But Perceive It) A Burning Bush, Then The Hallows Begin To Do Harm. Hence Both The Necessity, And The Perennial Danger, Of 'religion.'

A Faith In Culture Is As Bad As A Faith In Religion; Both Expressions Imply A Turning Away From Those Very Things Which Culture And Religion Are About. Culture As A Collective Name For Certain Very Valuable Activities Is A Permissible Word; But Culture Hypostatized, Set Up On Its Own, Made Into A Faith, A Cause, A Banner, A Platform, Is Unendurable. For None Of The Activities In Question Cares A Straw For That Faith Or Cause. It Is Like A Return To Early Semitic Religion Where Names Themselves Were Regarded As Powers.

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