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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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Love...is Not Merely A

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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It Is The Magician's Bargain: Give Up Our Soul, Get Power In Return. But Once Our Souls, That Is, Ourselves, Have Been Given Up, The Power Thus Conferred Will Not Belong To Us. We Shall In Fact Be The Slaves And Puppets Of That To Which We Have Given Our Souls.

What We Want Is Not More Little Books About Christianity, But More Little Books By Christians On Other Subjects--with Their Christianity Latent.

Chronological Snobbery Is The Uncritical Acceptance Of The Intellectual Climate Common To Our Own Age And The Assumption That Whatever Has Gone Out Of Date Is On That Account Discredited. You Must Find Why It Went Out Of Date. Was It Ever Refuted (and If So By Whom, Where, And How Conclusively), Or Did It Merely Die Away As Fashions Do? If The Latter, This Tells Us Nothing About Its Truth Or Falsehood.

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

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, I Can, I Think, Tell Him The First Step. The First Step Is To Realize That One Is Proud. And A Biggish Step, Too. At Least, Nothing Whatever Can Be Done Before It. If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means That You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy.

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work.

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

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

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.

In A Civilization Like Ours, I Feel That Everyone Has To Come To Terms With The Claims Of Jesus Christ Upon His Life, Or Else Be Guilty Of Inattention Or Of Evading The Question.

What Can Be Better Than To Get Out A Book On Saturday Afternoon And Thrust All Mundane Considerations Away Till Next Week.

The Castle Of Cair Paravel On Its Little Hill Towered Up Above Them; Before Them Were The Sands, With Rocks And Little Pools Of Salt Water, And Seaweed, And The Smell Of The Sea And Long Miles Of Bluish-green Waves Breaking For Ever And Ever On The Beach. And Oh, The Cry Of The Seagulls! Have You Ever Heard It? Can You Remember?

God, Who Foresaw Your Tribulation, Has Specially Armed You To Go Through It, Not Without Pain But Without Stain.

There Is A Difficulty About Disagreeing With God. He Is The Source From Which All Your Reasoning Power Comes: You Could Not Be Right And He Wrong Any More Than A Stream Can Rise Higher Than Its Own Source. When You Are Arguing Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

Each Generation Exercises Power Over Its Successors: And Each, In So Far As It Modifies The Environment Bequeathed To It And Rebels Against Tradition, Resists And Limits The Power Of Its Predecessors.

Thought Provoking

I Never See Why We Should Do Anything Unless It Is Either A Duty Or A Pleasure! Life's Short Enough Without Filling Up Hours Unnecessarily

You All Know," Said The Guide, "that Security Is Mortals' Greatest Enemy.

It Isn't Narnia, You Know," Sobbed Lucy. "it's You. We Shan't Meet You There. And How Can We Live, Never Meeting You?" "but You Shall Meet Me, Dear One," Said Aslan. "are -are You There Too, Sir?" Said Edmund. "i Am," Said Aslan. "but There I Have Another Name. You Must Learn To Know Me By That Name. This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

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

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

Satan Always Sends Error Into The World In Pairs That Are Opposites. His Great Hope Is That You Will Get So Upset About One Of His Errors, That You'll React Into The Opposite One, And He's Got You.

Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly. For All That Can Be Shaken Will Be Shaken And Only The Unshakeable Remains.

The Human Mind Is Generally Far More Eager To Praise Or Dispraise Than It Is To Describe And Define.

The People With Very Hard Problems Are Understood By God. He Knows What Wretched Machines They Are Trying To Drive. Some Day He Will Fling Them Away And Give Those People New Ones; Then They May Astonish Everyone, For They Learned Their Driving In A Hard School. Some Of The Last Will Be First And Some Of The First Will Be Last.

This Is A Book About Something

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)

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

This Is The Land Of Narnia,' Said The Faun, 'where We Are Now; All That Lies Between The Lamp-post And The Great Castle Of Cair Paravel On The Eastern Sea.

It Is Hard To Have Patience With People Who Say 'there Is No Death' Or 'death Doesn't Matter.' There Is Death. And Whatever Is Matters. And Whatever Happens Has Consequences, And It And They Are Irrevocable And Irreversible. You Might As Well Say That Birth Doesn't Matter.

It Is In The Process Of Being Worshipped That God Communicates His Presence To Men.

This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

Never Forget That When We Are Dealing With Any Pleasure In Its Healthy And Normal And Satisfying Form, We Are, In A Sense, On The Enemy’s (god’s) Ground…he [god] Made The Pleasure: All Our Research So Far Has Not Enabled Us To Produce One. All We Can Do Is To Encourage The Humans To Take The Pleasures Which Our Enemy [god] Has Produced, At At Times, Or In Ways, Or In Degrees, Which He [god] Has Forbidden.

I Object To That Remark Very Strongly! - The Magician's Nephew

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

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

Hope Is One Of The Theological Virtues. This Means That A Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not (as Some Modern People Think) A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do. It Does Not Mean That We Are To Leave The Present World As It Is. If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Just Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

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

If You Make The Same Guess Often Enough It Ceases To Be A Guess And Becomes A Scientific Fact. This Is The Inductive Method.

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

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

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

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.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

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.

Reason Is The Natural Order Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning.

Feeling Like The Voice She Liked Best In All The World Was Calling Her Name.

Humanity Does Not Pass Through Phases As A Train Passes Through Stations: Being Alive, It Has The Privilege Of Always Moving Yet Never Leaving Anything Behind. Whatever We Have Been, In Some Sort We Are Still.

Man Is To Be Understood Only In His Relationship To God.

The Story Does What No Theorem Can Quite Do. It May Not Be "like Real Life" In The Superficial Sense: But It Sets Before Us An Image Of What Reality May Well Be Like At Some More Central Region.

We Have Discovered That The Scheme Of 'outlawing War' Has Made War More Like An Outlaw Without Making It Less Frequent And That To Banish The Knight Does Not Alleviate The Suffering Of The Peasant.

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

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

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

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.

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.

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

If We Only Have The Will To Walk, Then God Is Pleased With Our Stumbles.

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

... Believing In A God Whom We Cannot But Regard As Evil, And Then, In Mere Terrified Flattery Calling Him 'good' And Worshipping Him Is A Still Greater Danger... The Ultimate Question Is Whether The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Or That Of The Inerrancy Of Scripture Is To Prevail When They Conflict. I Think The Doctrine Of The Goodness Of God Is The More Certain Of The Two. Indeed, Only That Doctrine Renders This Worship Of Him Obligatory Or Even Permissable.

We Have On The One Hand A Desperate Need; Hunger, Sickness, And The Dread Of War. We Have, On The Other, The Conception Of Something That Might Meet It: Omnicompetent Global Technocracy. Are Not These The Ideal Opportunity For Enslavement? This Is How It Has Entered Before; A Desperate Need (real Or Apparent) In The One Party, A Power (real Or Apparent) To Relieve It, In The Other.

The Cross Comes Before The Crown And Tomorrow Is A Monday Morning!

I Am Suffering Incessant Temptations To Uncharitable Thoughts At Present; One Of Those Black Moods In Which Nearly All One's Friends Seem To Be Selfish Or Even False. And How Terrible That There Should Be Even A Kind Of Pleasure In Thinking Evil.

When A Man Is Getting Better He Understands More And More Clearly The Evil That Is Still Left In Him. When A Man Is Getting Worse He Understands His Own Badness Less And Less.

Because, As We Know, Almost Anything Can Be Read Into Any Book If You Are Determined Enough. This Will Be Especially Impressed On Anyone Who Has Written Fantastic Fiction. He Will Find Reviewers, Both Favourable And Hostile, Reading Into His Stories All Manner Of Allegorical Meanings Which He Never Intended. (some Of The Allegories Thus Imposed On My Own Books Have Been So Ingenious And Interesting That I Often Wish I Had Thought Of Them Myself.)

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

At The Very Least, They Can Be Persuaded That The Bodily Position Makes No Difference To Their Prayers; For They Constantly Forget[...]that They Are Animals And That Whatever Their Bodies Do Affects Their Souls.

We Do Not See Into Men’s Hearts. We Cannot Judge, And Are Indeed Forbidden To Judge.

God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks To Us In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains.

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 Think We Must Attack -- Wherever We Meet It -- The Nonsensical Idea That Mutually Exclusive Propositions About God Can Both Be True.

Wouldn't He Know Without Being Asked?' Said Polly. 'i've No Doubt He Would,' Said The Horse (still With His Mouth Full). 'but I've A Sort Of An Idea He Likes To Be Asked.

Sexual Appetite, Like Any Other Appetite, Grows By Indulgence

One Of The Things That Distinguishes Man From The Other Animals Is That He Wants To Know Things, Wants To Find Out What Reality Is Like, Simply For The Sake Of Knowing. When That Desire Is Completely Quenched In Anyone, I Think He Has Become Something Less Than Human.

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.

I Hope I Do Not Offend God By Making My Communions In The Frame Of Mind I Have Been Describing. The Command, After All, Was Take, Eat: Not Take, Understand.

We Were Made To Be Neither Cerebral Men Nor Visceral Men, But Men. Not Beasts Nor Angels But Men - Things At Once Rational And Animal.

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.

He That But Looketh On A Plate Of Ham And Eggs To Lust After It Hath Already Committed Breakfast With It In His Heart

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him. If You Injure Someone You Dislike, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him More. If You Do Him A Good Turn, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him Less.

Finding Yourself

Giant Wimbleweather Burst Into One Of Those Not Very Intelligent Laughs To Which The Nicer Sort Of Giants Are So Liable. He Checked Himself At Once And Looked As Grace As A Turnip By The Time Reepicheep Discovered Where The Noise Came From.

The Eternal Being, Who Knows Everything And Who Created The Whole Universe, Became Not Only A Man But (before That) A Baby, And Before That A Fetus In A Woman's Body.

Catch {a Man} At The Moment When He Is Really Poor In Spirit And Smuggle Into His Mind The Gratifying Reflection, "by Jove, I'm Being Humble," And Almost Immediately Pride - Pride At His Own Humility - Will Appear.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. 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. Wrap It Carefully Round With Hobbies And Little Luxuries; Avoid All Entanglements. Lock It Up Safe In The Casket Or Coffin Of Your Selfishness. But In That Casket, Safe, Dark, Motionless, Airless, It Will Change. It Will Not Be Broken; It Will Become Unbreakable, Impenetrable, Irredeemable. To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

Lucy Went First, Biting Her Lip And Trying Not To Say All The Things She Thought Of Saying To Susan. But She Forgot Them When She Fixed Her Eyes On Aslan.

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.

[something] Does Not Rise To The Dignity Of Error.

There Is But One Good; That Is God. Everything Else Is Good When It Looks To Him And Bad When It Turns From Him.

Christianity Does Not Want Us To Reduce By One Atom The Hatred We Feel For Cruelty And Treachery. We Ought To Hate Them. Not One Word Of What We Have Said About Them Needs To Be Unsaid. But It Does Want Us To Hate Them In The Same Way In Which We Hate Things In Ourselves: Being Sorry That The Man Should Have Done Such Things, And Hoping, If It Is Anyway Possible, That Somehow, Sometime, Somewhere He Can Be Cured And Made Human Again.

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.

We Must Meet Children As Equals In That Area Of Our Nature Where We Are Their Equals...the Child As Reader Is Neither To Be Patronized Nor Idolized: We Talk To Him As Man To Man.

You Must Make Your Choice: Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool, You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us. He Did Not Intend To.

If Anyone Present Wishes To Make Me The Subject Of His Wit, I Am Very Much At His Service--with My Sword--whenever He Has Leisure.

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.

All Their Life In This World And All Their Adventures Had Only Been The Cover And The Title Page: Now At Last They Were Beginning Chapter One Of The Great Story Which No One On Earth Has Read: Which Goes On For Ever: In Which Every Chapter Is Better Than The One Before.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

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.

I Think It Very Wrong To Pray For People While They Are In Distress And Then Not To Continue Praying, Now With Thanksgiving, When They Are Relieved.

No One Can Say 'he Jests At Scars Who Never Felt A Wound' For I Have Never For One Moment Been In A State Of Mind To Which Even The Imagination Of Serious Pain Was Less Than Intolerable. If Any Man Is Safe From The Danger Of Under-estimating This Adversary, I Am That Man.

Those Who Are Enjoying Something, Or Suffering Something, Together, Are Companions. Those Who Enjoy Or Suffer One Another, Are Not.

The Mold In Which A Key Is Made Would Be A Strange Thing, If You Had Never Seen A Key: And The Key Itself A Strange Thing If You Had Never Seen A Lock. Your Soul Has A Curious Shape Because It Is A Hollow Made To Fit A Particular Swelling In The Infinite Contours Of The Divine Substance, Or A Key To Unlock One Of The Doors In The House With Many Mansions. Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It -- Made For It Stitch By Stitch As A Glove Is Made For A Hand.

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

I Have At Last Come To The End Of The Faerie Queene: And Though I Say "at Last", I Almost Wish He Had Lived To Write Six Books More As He Had Hoped To Do — So Much Have I Enjoyed It.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike. Subjectivism About Moral Values Is Eternally Incompatible With Democracy. We And Our Rulers Are Of One Kind Only So Long As We Are Subject To One Law. But If There Is No Law Of Nature, The Ethos Of Any Society Is The Creation Of Its Rulers, Educators And Conditioners; And Every Creator Stands Above And Outside His Own Creation.

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

She Did Not Shut It Properly Because She Knew That It Is Very Silly To Shut Oneself Into A Wardrobe, Even If It Is Not A Magic One.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Holy Places Are Dark Places. It Is Life And Strength, Not Knowledge And Words, That We Get In Them. Holy Wisdom Is Not Clear And Thin Like Water, But Thick And Dark Like Blood.

The Christian And The Materialist Hold Different Beliefs About The Universe. They Can't Both Be Right. The One Who Is Wrong Will Act In A Way Which Simply Doesn't Fit The Real Universe. Consequently, With The Best Will In The World, He Will Be Helping His Fellow Creatures To Their Destruction.

I Have Come Home At Last! This Is My Real Country! I Belong Here. This Is The Land I Have Been Looking For All My Life, Though I Never Knew It Till Now... Come Further Up, Come Further In!

Part Of Every Misery Is, So To Speak, The Misery's Shadow Or Reflection: The Fact That You Don't Merely Suffer But Have To Keep On Thinking About The Fact That You Suffer. I Not Only Live Each Endless Day In Grief, But Live Each Day Thinking About Living Each Day In Grief.

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

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

If Conversion To Christianity Makes No Improvement In A Man's Outward Actions – If He Continues To Be Just A Snobbish Or Spiteful Or Envious Or Ambitious As He Was Before – Then I Think We Must Suspect That His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

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

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom, Humility The Road To Pleasure, Unity The Road To Personality.

The Distinction Between Pretending You Are Better Than You Are And Beginning To Be Better In Reality Is Finer Than Moral Sleuth Hounds Conceive.

The Stamp Of The Saint Is That He Can Waive His Own Rights And Obey The Lord Jesus.

The Fact That You Are Giving Money To Charity Does Not Mean That You Need Not Try To Find Out Whether That Charity Is A Fraud Or Not.

One Of The Dangers Of Having A Lot Of Money Is That You May Be Quite Satisfied With The Kinds Of Happiness Money Can Give And So Fail To Realize Your Need For God. If Everything Seems To Come Simply By Signing Checks, You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

We Are Told That Christ Was Killed For Us, That His Death Has Washed Out Our Sins, And That By Dying He Disabled Death Itself. That Is The Formula. That Is Christianity. That Is What Has To Be Believed.

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

If We Continue To Make Moral Judgements (and Whatever We Say Shall In Fact Continue) Then We Must Believe That The Conscience Of Man Is Not A Product Of Nature.

All Shall Be Done, But It May Be Harder Than You Think.

See The Bear In His Own Den Before You Judge Of His Conditions.

Christianity Tells People To Repent And Promises Them Forgiveness. It Therefore Has Nothing (as Far As I Know) To Say To People Who Do Not Know They Have Done Anything To Repent Of And Who Do Not Feel That They Need Forgiveness.

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

But In Reading Great Literature I Become A Thousand Men And Yet Remain Myself. Like The Night Sky In The Greek Poem, I See With A Myriad Eyes, But It Is Still I Who See. Here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

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

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung.

A Society Where The Simple Many Obey The Few Seers Can Live; A Society Where All Were Seers Could Live Even More Fully. But A Society Where The Mass Is Still Simple And The Seers Are No Longer Attended To Can Achieve Only Superficiality, Baseness, Ugliness, And In The End Extinction. On Or Back We Must Go: To Stay Here Is Death.

All Killing Is Not Murder Any More Than All Sexual Intercourse Is Adultery.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."

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

A Man Who Has Been In Another World Does Not Come Back Unchanged. One Can't Put The Difference Into Words. When The Man Is A Friend It May Become Painful: The Old Footing Is Not Easy To Recover.

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

Christianity Seems At First To Be All About Morality, All About Duties And Rules And Guilt And Virtue, Yet It Leads You On, Out Of All That, Into Something Beyond. One Has A Glimpse Of A Country Where They Do Not Talk Of Those Things, Except Perhaps As A Joke. Every One There Is Filled Full With What We Should Call Goodness As A Mirror Is Filled With Light. But They Do Not Call It Goodness. They Do Not Call It Anything. They Are Not Thinking Of It. They Are Too Busy Looking At The Source From Which It Comes.

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

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.

My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.

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

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

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

You Asked For A Loving God: You Have One... The Consuming Fire Himself, The Love That Made The Worlds, Persistent As The Artist's Love For His Work And Despotic As A Man's Love For A Dog, Provident And Venerable As A Father's Love For A Child, Jealous, Inexorable, Exacting As Love Between The Sexes. How This Should Be, I Do Not Know: It Passes Reason To Explain Why Any Creatures, Not To Say Creatures Such As We, Should Have A Value So Prodigious In Their Creator's Eyes.

It Is In Some Ways More Troublesome To Track And Swat An Evasive Wasp Than To Shoot, At Close Range, A Wild Elephant. But The Elephant Is More Troublesome If You Miss.

Where I Come From, They Don't Think Much Of Men Who Are Bossed About By Their Wives.

The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God. But Every Novelty Prevents This. It Fixes Our Attention On The Service Itself; And Thinking About Worship Is A Different Thing Than Worshipping ... 'tis Mad Idolatry That Makes The Service Greater Than The God.

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.

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

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

The Promise, Made When I Am In Love And Because I Am In Love, To Be True To The Beloved As Long As I Live, Commits Me To Being True Even If I Cease To Be In Love. A Promise Must Be About Things That I Can Do, About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling In A Certain Way. He Might As Well Promise To Never Have A Headache Or Always To Feel Hungry.

A Universe Whose Only Claim To Be Believed In Rests On The Validity Of Inference Must Not Start Telling Us The Inference Is Invalid.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.

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

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?

Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills.

Humour Is...the All-consoling And...the All-excusing, Grace Of Life.

What The Soul Cries Out For Is The Resurrection Of The Senses. Even In This Life, Matter Would Be Nothing To Us If It Were Not The Source Of Sensations.

You'll Never Make A Good Impression On Other People Until You Stop Thinking What Sort Of Impression You Make.

After An Error You Need Not Only To Remove The Causes But Also To Correct The Error Itself: After A Sin You Must Not Only, If Possible, Remove The Temptation, You Must Also Go Back And Repent The Sin Itself. In Each Case An 'undoing' Is Required.

People Who Know A Lot Of The Same Things Can Hardly Help Talking About Them.

You And I Who Still Enjoy Fairy Tales Have Less Reason To Wish Actual Childhood Back. We Have Kept Its Pleasures And Added Some Grown-up Ones As Well.

As Long As He Doesn't Convert It Into Action, It Does Not Matter How Much A Man Thinks About His Repentance.

Life With God Is Not Immunity From Difficulties, But Peace In Difficulties.

The Absent Are Easily Refuted.

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

Before We Can Be Cured, We Must Want To Be Cured.

Do Not Let Us Mistake Necessary Evils For Good.

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

Making A Difference

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

Screwtape Letters

If We Are Any Good We Must Always Be Working Towards The Moment At Which Our Pupils Are Fit To Become Our Critics & Rivals

Those Who Do Not Think About Their Own Sins Make Up For It By Thinking Incessantly About The Sins Of Others.

Agnostics Talk Cheerfully Of Man's Search For God But They Might As Well Talk About The Mouse's Search For The Cat.

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

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

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.

Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

Fools!" Said The Man, Stamping His Foot With Rage. "that Is The Sort Of Talk That Brought Me Here, And I'd Better Have Been Drowned Or Never Born. Do You Hear What I Say? This Is Where Dreams — Dreams, Do You Understand — Come To Life, Come Real. Not Daydreams: Dreams.

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

The Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).

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

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

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?

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

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.

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

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.

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

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

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

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

Provocation Doesn't Make Me Ill-tempered: It Only Shows Me How Ill-tempered I Am.

The Birth Of Christ Is The Central Event In The History Of The Earth-- The Very Thing The Whole Story Has Been About.

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

I Have Read The Aeneid Through More Often Than I Have Read Any Long Poem.

We Shall Draw Nearer To God, Not By Trying To Avoid The Sufferings Inherent In All Loves, But By Accepting Them And Offering Them To Him; Throwing Away All Defensive Armour. If Our Hearts Need To Be Broken, And If He Chooses This As The Way In Which They Should Break, So Be It.

[the Decay Of Logic Results From An] Untroubled Assumption That The Particular Is Real And The Universal Is Not.

Truth And Falsehood Are Opposed; But Truth Is The Norm Not Of Truth Only But Of Falsehood Also.

Truth And Falsehood

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

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

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Kay Bailey Hutchison

William Lyon Mackenzie King

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