Background Image

...

It Would Be Impossible To Accept Naturalism Itself If We Really And Consistently Believed Naturalism. For Naturalism Is A System Of Thought. But For Naturalism All Thoughts Are Mere Events With Irrational Causes. It Is, To Me At Any Rate, Impossible To Regard The Thoughts Which Make Up Naturalism In That Way And, At The Same Time, Regard Them As A Real Insight Into External Reality...if It Is True, Then We Can Know No Truths. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It Would Be Impossible

C. S. Lewis

...

It Would Be Impossible To Accept Naturalism Itself If We Really And Consistently Believed Naturalism. For Naturalism Is A System Of Thought. But For Naturalism All Thoughts Are Mere Events With Irrational Causes. It Is, To Me At Any Rate, Impossible To Regard The Thoughts Which Make Up Naturalism In That Way And, At The Same Time, Regard Them As A Real Insight Into External Reality...if It Is True, Then We Can Know No Truths. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Views: 7

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

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

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.

Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

Screwtape Letters

Love...is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit; Reinforced By (in Christian Marriages) The Grace Which Both Partners Ask, And Receive, From God. They Can Have This Love For Each Other Even At Those Moments When They Do Not Like Each Other; As You Love Yourself Even When You Do Not Like Yourself.

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

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them.... I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

If We Did Not Bring To The Examinations Of Our Instincts A Knowledge Of Their Comparative Dignity We Could Never Learn It From Them.

All These Toys Were Never Intended To Possess My Heart. My True Good Is In Another World, And My Only Real Treasure Is Christ.

Poetry Too Is A Little Incarnation, Giving Body To What Had Been Before Invisible And Inaudible.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

The More We Get What We Now Call 'ourselves' Out Of The Way And Let Him Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become.

Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.

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.

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.

I Am A Product Of Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them. There Were Books In The Study, Books In The Drawing Room, Books In The Cloakroom, Books (two Deep) In The Great Bookcase On The Landing, Books In A Bedroom, Books Piled As High As My Shoulder In The Cistern Attic...in The Seemingly Endless Rainy Afternoons I Took Volume After Volume From The Shelves. I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.

The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.

I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)

Love Is Never Wasted, For Its Value Does Not Rest Upon Reciprocity.

If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity.

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.

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

I Desired Dragons With A Profound Desire.

Do Not Cite The Deep Magic To Me, Witch. I Was There When It Was Written.

Try To Exclude The Possibility Of Suffering Which The Order Of Nature And The Existence Of Free-wills Involve, And You Find That You Have Excluded Life Itself

As Image And Apprehension Are In Organic Unity, So, For A Christian, Are Human Body And Human Soul.

The Moment Good Taste Knows Itself, Some Of Its Goodness Is Lost.

Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is. ... We Never Find Out The Strength Of The Evil Impulse Inside Us Until We Try To Fight It: And Christ, Because He Was The Only Man Who Never Yielded To Temptation, Is Also The Only Man Who Knows To The Full What Temptation Means—the Only Complete Realist.

I Wish We Didn't Live In A World Where Buying And Selling Things Seems To Have Become Almost More Important Than Either Producing Or Using Them.

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

Of Course Language Is Not An Infallible Guide, But It Contains, With All Its Defects, A Good Deal Of Stored Insight And Experience.

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

People Who Bore One Another Should Meet Seldom; People Who Interest One Another, Often.

Yes, I Know,' Interrupted Puddleglum. 'and Few Return To The Sunlit Lands. You Needn't Say It Again. You Are A Chap Of One Idea, Aren't You?

If We Ignore It The Truth That God Is Love May Slyly Come To Mean For Us The Converse, That Love Is God.

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe Is A Price Worth Paying For Free Will--that Is, For Making A Live World In Which Creatures Can Do Real Good Or Harm And Something Of Real Importance Of Real Importance Can Happen, Instead Of A Toy World Which Only Moves When He Pulls The Strings--then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven. The Only Fatal Thing Is To Sit Down Content With Anything Less Than Perfection.

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.

You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

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

To Be A Christian Means To Forgive The Inexcusable Because God Has Forgiven The Inexcusable In You.

Hell Begins With A Grumbling Mood, Always Complaining, Always Blaming Others.

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.

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

There Are A Dozen Views About Everything Until You Know The Answer. Then There's Never More Than One.

Theology Is Like A Map. Merely Learning And Thinking About The Christian Doctrines, If You Stop There, Is Less Real And Less Exciting Than The Sort Of Thing My Friend Got In The Desert. Doctrines Are Not God: They Are Only A Kind Of Map. But That Map Is Based On The Experience Of Hundreds Of People Who Really Were In Touch With God--experiences Compared With Which Many Thrills Of Pious Feelings You And I Are Likely To Get On Our Own Are Very Elementary And Very Confused. And Secondly, If You Want To Get Any Further You Must Use The Map.

To Walk Out Of His Will Is To Walk Into Nowhere.

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.

The Process Of Growing Up Is To Be Valued For What We Gain, Not For What We Lose.

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

It Is When We Notice The Dirt That God Is Most Present In Us; It Is The Very Sign Of His Presence.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

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.

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).

Kids Like Us Don't Often Have The Chance Of Meeting A Great Warrior Like You. Would You Have A Little Fencing Match With Me? It Would Be Frightfully Decent.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

If You Want To Get Warm You Must Stand Near The Fire: If You Want To Be Wet You Must Get Into The Water. If You Want Joy, Power, Peace, Eternal Life, You Must Get Close To, Or Even Into, The Thing That Has Them. They Are Not A Sort Of Prize Which God Could, If He Chose, Just Hand Out To Anyone.

Good Beats Upon The Damned Incessantly As Sound Waves Beat On The Ears Of The Deaf, But They Cannot Receive It. Their Fists Are Clenched, Their Teeth Are Clenched, Their Eyes Fast Shut. First They Will Not, In The End They Cannot, Open Their Hands For Gifts, Or Their Mouth For Food, Or Their Eyes To See.

Where, Except In Uncreated Light, Can The Darkness Be Drowned?

Here The Whole World (stars, Water, Air, And Field, And Forest, As They Were Reflected In A Single Mind) Like Cast Off Clothes Was Left Behind In Ashes, Yet With Hopes That She, Re-born From Holy Poverty, In Lenten Lands, Hereafter May Resume Them On Her Easter Day." (epitaph For Joy Gresham)

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.

For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.

You Cannot Go On 'explaining Away' For Ever: You Will Find That You Have Explained Explanation Itself Away. You Cannot Go On 'seeing Through' Things For Ever. The Whole Point Of Seeing Through Something Is To See Something Through It.

We Can Rest Contentedly In Our Sins And In Our Stupidities, And Anyone Who Has Watched Gluttons Shoveling Down The Most Exquisite Foods As If They Did Not Know What They Were Eating Will Admit That We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But 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.

Ah, You've Come Over The Water. Powerful Wet Stuff, Ain't It?

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him.

To Move With The Times Is, Of Course, To Go Where All Times Go.

I Do Not Expect Old Heads On Young Shoulders.

Thus We Have Now For Many Centuries Triumphed Over Nature To The Extent Of Making Certain Secondary Characteristics Of The Male (such As The Beard) Disagreeable To Nearly All The Females—and There Is More In That Than You Might Suppose.

The Man Is A Humbug — A Vulgar, Shallow, Self-satisfied Mind, Absolutely Inaccessible To The Complexities And Delicacies Of The Real World. He Has The Journalist's Air Of Being A Specialist In Everything, Of Taking In All Points Of View And Being Always On The Side Of The Angels: He Merely Annoys A Reader Who Has The Least Experience Of Knowing Things, Of What Knowing Is Like. There Is Not Two Pence Worth Of Real Thought Or Real Nobility In Him. But He Isn't Dull.

The True Enjoyments Must Be Spontaneous And Compulsive And Look To No Remoter End.

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

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

When First Things Are Put First, Second Things Are Not Suppressed But Increased.

Put First Things First

First Things First

Every Age Has Its Own Outlook. It Is Specially Good At Seeing Certain Truths And Specially Liable To Make Certain Mistakes. We All, Therefore, Need The Books That Will Correct The Characteristic Mistake Of Our Own Period. And That Means The Old Books.

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

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

You Can't Go Against The Grain Of The Universe And Not Expect To Get Splinters.

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.

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.

You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best

Aslan Is A Lion- The Lion, The Great Lion." "ooh" Said Susan. "i'd Thought He Was A Man. Is He-quite Safe? I Shall Feel Rather Nervous About Meeting A Lion"..."safe?" Said Mr Beaver ..."who Said Anything About Safe? 'course He Isn't Safe. But He's Good. He's The King, I Tell You.

The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

Child, That Is Why All The Rest Are Now A Horror To Her. That Is What Happens To Those Who Pluck And Eat Fruits At The Wrong Time And In The Wrong Way. Oh, The Fruit Is Good, But They Loath It Ever After.

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?

I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.

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.

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

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

Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In

Have Fun, Even If It’s Not The Same Kind Of Fun Everyone Else Is Having.

I Wrote This Story For You, But When I Began It I Had Not Realized That Girls Grow Quicker Than Books. As A Result You Are Already Too Old For Fairy Tales, And By The Time It Is Printed And Bound You Will Be Older Still. But Some Day You Will Be Old Enough To Start Reading Fairy Tales Again. You Can Then Take It Down From Some Upper Shelf, Dust It, And Tell Me What You Think Of It. I Shall Probably Be Too Deaf To Hear, And Too Old To Understand A Word You Say, But I Shall Still Be Your Affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.

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

Could One Start A Stagnation Party-which At General Elections Would Boast That During Its Term Of Office No Event Of The Least Importance Had Taken Place?

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

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

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.

All Names Will Soon Be Restored To Their Proper Owners.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Freedom Always Comes With A Price.

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.

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?

Holiness Is Irresistible. If Even 10% Of The World's Population Had It The Whole World Would Be Converted And Happy Before The Year's End.

Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.

In Gethsemane The Holiest Of All Petitioners Prayed Three Times That A Certain Cup Might Pass From Him. It Did Not.

When He Was A Young Man He Prayed Constantly For Chastity; But Years Later He Realized That While His Lips Had Been Saying 'oh Lord, Make Me Chaste,' His Heart Had Been Secretly Adding, 'but Please Don't Do It Just Yet.

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.

It Is A Very Funny Thing That The Sleepier You Are, The Longer You Take About Getting To Bed.

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?

We Do Not Enjoy A Story Fully At The First Reading. Not Till The Curiosity, The Sheer Narrative Lust, Has Been Given Its Sop And Laid Asleep, Are We At Leisure To Savour The Real Beauties.

Peter Did Not Feel Very Brave; Indeed, He Felt He Was Going To Be Sick. But That Made No Difference To What He Had To Do.

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.

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.

We All Appear As Dunces When Feigning An Interest In Things We Care Nothing About.

I Felt Ashamed." "but Of What? Psyche, They Hadn't Stripped You Naked Or Anything?" "no, No, Maia. Ashamed Of Looking Like A Mortal -- Of Being A Mortal." "but How Could You Help That?" "don't You Think The Things People Are Most Ashamed Of Are Things They Can't Help?

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

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.

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

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

Telling Us To Obey Instinct Is Like Telling Us To Obey 'people.' People Say Different Things: So Do Instincts. Our Instincts Are At War... Each Instinct, If You Listen To It, Will Claim To Be Gratified At The Expense Of The Rest.

Either The Day Must Come When Joy Prevails And All The Makers Of Misery Are No Longer Able To Infect It, Or Else, For Ever And Ever, The Makers Of Misery Can Destroy In Others The Happiness They Reject For Themselves.

Do You Not Know How Bashful Friendship Is? Friends - Comrades - Do Not Look At Each Other. Friendship Would Be Ashamed.

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

It Will Not Bother Me In The Hour Of Death To Reflect That I Have Been "had For A Sucker" By Any Number Of Imposters But It Would Be A Torment To Know That One Had Refused Even One Person In Need.

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are The Picture. You Can’t See It, You Can't See Your True Self. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted.

Her Face Was Working And Twitching With Passion, But His Looked Up At The Sky, Still Quiet, Neither Angry Nor Afraid, But A Little Sad.

Spiteful Words Can Hurt Your Feelings But Silence Breaks Your Heart.

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

But I Remember More Dearly Autumn Afternoons In Bottoms That Lay Intensely Silent Under Old Great Trees

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

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

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.

Child, To Say The Very Thing You Really Mean, The Whole Of It, Nothing More Or Less Or Other Than What You Really Mean; That's The Whole Art And Joy Of Words.

Christianity Asserts That Every Individual Human Being Is Going To Live For Ever, And This Must Be Either True Or False. Now There Are A Good Many Things Which Would Not Be Worth Bothering About If I Were Going To Live Only Seventy Years, But Which I Had Better Bother About Very Seriously If I Am Going To Live For Ever.

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

The Thing Is To Rely On God. The Time Will Come When You Will Regard All This Misery As A Small Price To Pay For Having Been Brought To That Dependence. Meanwhile, The Trouble Is That Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Has Yet Been Done.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

Every Good Book Should Be Entertaining. A Good Book Will Be More; It Must Not Be Less. Entertainment…is Like A Qualifying Examination. If A Fiction Can’t Provide That, We May Be Excused From Inquiring Into Its Higher Qualities.

Man's Conquest Of Nature Turns Out, In The Moment Of Its Consummation, To Be Nature's Conquest Of Man.

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

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

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

As Christians We Are Tempted To Make Unnecessary Concessions To Those Outside The Faith. We Give In Too Much. Now, I Don't Mean That We Should Run The Risk Of Making A Nuisance Of Ourselves By Witnessing At Improper Times, But There Comes A Time When We Must Show That We Disagree.

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

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

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

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

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

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

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing That God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy...whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want. Once More, We Are Embarrassed By The Intolerable Compliment, By Too Much Love, Not Too Little.

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

We May Give Our Human Loves The Unconditional Allegiance Which We Owe Only To God. They They Become Gods: Then They Become Demons. Then They Will Destroy Us, And Also Destroy Themselves. For Natural Loves That Are Allowed To Become Gods Do Not Remain Loves. They Are Still Called So, But Can Become In Fact Complicated Forms Of Hatred.

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.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

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

People Blush At Praise--not Only Praise Of Their Bodies, But Praise Of Anything That Is Theirs.

A Concentrated Mind And A Sitting Body Make For Better Prayer Than A Kneeling Body And A Mind Half Asleep.

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.

The Story Itself Should Force Its Moral Upon You. You Find Out What The Moral Is By Writing The Story.

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World

Knock And It Shall Be Opened.' But Does Knocking Mean Hammering And Kicking The Door Like A Maniac?

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.

If You Live For The Next World, You Get This One In The Deal; But If You Live Only For This World, You Lose Them Both.

The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him.

Humility Is Not Thinking Less Of Yourself, It's Thinking Of Yourself Less.

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

When Once A Man Is Launched On Such An Adventure As This, He Must Bid Farewell To Hopes And Fears, Otherwise Death Or Deliverance Will Both Come Too Late To Save His Honor And His Reason. Ho, My Beauties!

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

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

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

100 Per Cent Of Us Die, And The Percentage Cannot Be Increased.

Sexual Appetite, Like Any Other Appetite, Grows By Indulgence

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.

If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.

I Cannot Understand How A Man Can Appear In Print Claiming To Disbelieve Everything That He Presupposes When He Puts On The Surplice. I Feel It Is A Form Of Prostitution.

We Treat Our Dogs As If They Were "almost Human": That Is Why They Really Become "almost Human" In The End.

Pooh! Grown-ups Are Always Thinking Of Uninteresting Explanations.

This Act [creation], As It Is For God, Must Always Remain Totally Inconceivable To Man. For We--even Our Poets And Musicians And Inventors--never, In The Ultimate Sense Make. We Only Build. We Always Have Materials To Build From. All We Can Know About The Act Of Creation Must Be Derived From What We Can Gather About The Relation Of The Creatures To Their Creator

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

One Must Never Be Either Content With, Or Impatient With, Oneself.

Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering, Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

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

Miracles Do Not, In Fact, Break The Laws Of Nature.

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

The Most Valuable Thing The Psalms Do For Me Is To Express The Same Delight In God Which Made David Dance.

The Doctrine Of The Second Coming Teaches Us That We Do Not And Cannot Know When The World Drama Will End. The Curtain May Be Rung Down At Any Moment: Say, Before You Have Finished Reading This Paragraph.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

You Can Get A Large Audience Together For A Strip-tease Act—that Is, To Watch A Girl Undress On The Stage. Now Suppose You Come To A Country Where You Could Fill A Theatre By Simply Bringing A Covered Plate On To The Stage And Then Slowly Lifting The Cover So As To Let Every One See, Just Before The Lights Went Out, That It Contained A Mutton Chop Or A Bit Of Bacon, Would You Not Think That In That Country Something Had Gone Wrong With The Appetite For Food?

I Am Often, I Believe, Praying For Others When I Should Be Doing Things For Them. It's So Much Easier To Pray For A Bore Than To Go And See Him.

Since I Am I, I Must Make An Act Of Self-surrender, However Small Or However Easy, In Living To God Rather Than To My Self.

By The Very Act Of Arguing, You Awake The Patient's Reason; And Once It Is Awake, Who Can Foresee The Result?

The Enemy Wants To Bring The Man To A State Of Mind In Which He Could Design The Best Cathedral In The World, And Know It To Be The Best, And Rejoice In The Fact, Without Being Any More (or Less) Or Otherwise Glad At Having Done It Than He Would Be If It Had Been Done By Another. The Enemy Wants Him, In The End, To Be So Free From Any Bias In His Own Favour That He Can Rejoice In His Own Talents As Frankly And Gratefully As In His Neighbour's Talents--or In A Sunrise, An Elephant, Or A Waterfall.

There Is Something Which Unites Magic And Applied Science (technology) While Separating Them From The "wisdom" Of Earlier Ages. For The Wise Men Of Old, The Cardinal Problem Of Human Life Was How To Conform The Soul To Objective Reality, And The Solution Was Wisdom, Self-discipline , And Virtue. For The Modern, The Cardinal Problem Is How To Conform Reality To The Wishes Of Man, And The Solution Is A Technique.

A Man Is Never So Proud As When Striking An Attitude Of Humility.

When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place [if We Anticipate And Look For It, Rather Than Wallow In Our 'supposed Loss'. It Can Be Helpful To Think Of The Loss Of That Blessing As Simply Necessary To Make Way For Another Different Blessing].

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

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

Trending Author

Abraham Lincoln

Robert Foster Bennett

Category