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Materialism Is In Fact No Protection. Those Who Seek It In That Hope (they Are Not A Negligible Class) Will Be Disappointed. The Thing You Fear Is Impossible. Well And Good. Can You Therefore Cease To Fear It? Not Here And Now. And What Then? If You Must See Ghosts, It Is Better Not To Disbelieve In Them.

-C. S. Lewis

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Materialism Is In Fact

C. S. Lewis

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Materialism Is In Fact No Protection. Those Who Seek It In That Hope (they Are Not A Negligible Class) Will Be Disappointed. The Thing You Fear Is Impossible. Well And Good. Can You Therefore Cease To Fear It? Not Here And Now. And What Then? If You Must See Ghosts, It Is Better Not To Disbelieve In Them.

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Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

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Something Quite Unexpected Has Happened. It Came This Morning Early. For Various Reasons, Not In Themselves At All Mysterious, My Heart Was Lighter Than It Had Been For Many Weeks. ... And Suddenly, At The Very Moment When, So Far, I Mourned H. Least, I Remembered Her Best. Indeed It Was Something (almost) Better Than Memory; An Instantaneous, Unanswerable Impression. To Say It Was Like A Meeting Would Be Going Too Far. Yet There Was That In It Which Tempts One To Use Those Words. It Was As Though The Lifting Of The Sorrow Removed A Barrier.

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Cobbles And Kettledrums! ...i Hope This Madness Isn't Going To End In A Moonlit Climb And Broken Necks.

We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely

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

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

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In Great Literature, I Become A Thousand Different Men But Still Remain Myself.

If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Be Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

Telling The Truth

One Of The Most Dangerous Errors Is That Civilization Is Automatically Bound To Increase And Spread. The Lesson Of History Is The Opposite; Civilization Is A Rarity, Attained With Difficulty And Easily Lost. The Normal State Of Humanity Is Barbarism, Just As The Normal Surface Of The Planet Is Salt Water. Land Looms Large In Our Imagination And Civilization In History Books, Only Because Sea And Savagery Are To Us Less Interesting.

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.

Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

Ah, Poor Pole. It's Been To Much For Her, This Last Bit. Turned Her Head, I Shouldn't Wonder. She's Beginning To See Things.

When He [god] Talks Of Their Losing Their Selves, He Means Only Abandoning The Clamour Of Self-will; Once They Have Done That, He Really Gives Them Back All Their Personality, And Boasts (i Am Afraid, Sincerely) That When They Are Wholly His They Will Be More Themselves Than Ever.

The Man Who Truly And Disinterestedly Enjoys Any One Thing In The World, For Its Own Sake, And Without Caring Two-pence What Other People Say About It, Is By That Very Fact Forewarmed Against Some Of Our Subtlest Modes Of Attack.

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.

Writing Is Like A 'lust,' Or Like 'scratching When You Itch.' Writing Comes As A Result Of A Very Strong Impulse, And When It Does Come, I For One Must Get It Out.

The Holier A Man Becomes, The More He Mourns Over The Unholiness Which Remains In Him.

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side.

I#pray Because The Need Flows Out Of Me All The Time-walking And Sleeping. It Does Not Change #‎ God - It Changes Me.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man.

Each New Power Won By Man Is A Power Over Man As Well. Each Advance Leaves Him Weaker As Well As Stronger.

Thought Provoking

The Fundamental Laws Are In The Long Run Merely Statements That Every Event Is Itself And Not Some Different Event.

If You Are A Christian, You Are Free To Think That All These Religions, Even The Queerest Ones, Contain At Least Some Hint Of The Truth.

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

When You Argue 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.

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

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

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

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

Virtue - Even Attempted Virtue - Brings Light; Indulgence Brings Fog.

The Monstrosity Of Sexual Intercourse Outside Marriage Is That Those Who Indulge In It Are Trying To Isolate One Kind Of Union (the Sexual) From All The Other Kinds Of Union Which Were Intended To Go Along With It And Make Up The Total Union.

Tribulations Cannot Cease Until God Either Sees Us Remade Or Sees That Our Remaking Is Now Hopeless.

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

In God's Dimension, So To Speak, You Find A Being Who Is Three Persons While Remaining One Being, Just As A Cube Is Six Squares While Remaining One Cube.

Since It Is So Likely That (children) Will Meet Cruel Enemies, Let Them At Least Have Heard Of Brave Knights And Heroic Courage. Otherwise You Are Making Their Destiny Not Brighter But Darker.

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

And He [god] And You Are Two Things Of Such A Kind That If You Really Get Into Any Kind Of Touch With Him You Will, In Fact, Be Humble--delightedly Humble, Feeling The Infinite Relief Of Having For Once Got Rid Of All The Silly Nonsense About Your Own Dignity Which Has Made You Restless And Unhappy All Your Life.

Honest Rejection Of Christ, However Mistaken, Will Be Forgiven And Healed ... But To Evade The Son Of Man, To Look The Other Way, To Pretend You Haven't Noticed, To Become Suddenly Absorbed In Something On The Other Side Of The Street, To Leave The Receiver Off The Telephone Because It Might Be He Who Was Ringing Up, To Leave Unopened Certain Letters In A Strange Handwriting Because They Might Be From Him -- This Is A Different Matter. You May Not Be Certain Yet Whether You Ought To Be A Christian; But You Do Know You Ought To Be A Man, Not An Ostrich, Hiding Its Head In The Sand.

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

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

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

You Know What This Is, I Suppose. Religious Melancholia. Stop While There Is Time. If You Dive, You Dive Into Insanity.

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.

When You Invite A Middle-aged Moralist To Address You, I Suppose I Must Conclude That You Have A Taste For Middle-aged Moralizing.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

Love Is Not Affectionate Feeling, But A Steady Wish For The Loved Person's Ultimate Good As Far As It Can Be Obtained.

Falling In Love

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.

For The Power Of Man To Make Himself What He Pleases Means... The Power Of Some Men To Make Other Men What They Please.

The Modern State Exists Not To Protect Our Rights But To Do Us Good Or Make Us Good - Anyway, To Do Something To Us Or To Make Us Something. Hence The New Name 'leaders' For Those Who Were Once 'rulers'. We Are Less Their Subjects Than Their Wards, Pupils, Or Domestic Animals. There Is Nothing Left Of Which We Can Say To Them, 'mind Your Own Business.' Our Whole Lives Are Their Business.

The Human Qualities Of The Raw Materials Show Through. Naivety, Error, Contradiction, Even (as In The Cursing Psalms) Wickedness Are Not Removed. The Total Result Is Not "the Word Of God" In The Sense That Every Passage In Itself, Gives Impeccable Science Or History. It Carries The Word Of God.

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.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

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.

The Only Things We Can Keep Are The Things We Freely Give To God. What We Try To Keep For Ourselves Is Just What We Are Sure To Lose.

For His Mind Was Full Of Forlorn Hopes, Death-or-glory Charges, And Last Stands.

When I Have Learned To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now.

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

This Wasn't A Garden,' Said Susan Presently. 'it Was A Castle.

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

For Every One Pupil Who Needs To Be Guarded Against A Weak Excess Of Sensibility There Are Three Who Need To Be Awakened From The Slumber Of Cold Vulgarity. The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts.

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.

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

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

Every Natural Love Will Rise Again And Live Forever In This Country: But None Will Rise Again Until It Has Been Buried.

I Have Learned Now That While Those Who Speak About One's Miseries Usually Hurt, Those Who Keep Silence Hurt More.

I Seemed To Hear God Saying, "put Down Your Gun And We'll Talk.

Gratitude Exclaims, Very Properly, 'how Good Of God To Give Me This.'

God's Love Is Not Wearied By Our Sins & Is Relentless In Its Determination That We Be Cured At Whatever Cost To Us Or Him

The Central Miracle Asserted By Christians Is The Incarnation. They Say That God Became Man.

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

You Think You Know

There Is One Bit Of Advice Given Us By The Ancient Greeks, And By The Jews In The Old Testament, And By The Great Christian Teachers Of The Middle Ages, Which The Modern Economic System Has Completely Disobeyed. All These People Told Us Not To Lend Money At Interest; And Lending Money At Interest - What We Call Investment - Is The Basis Of Our Whole System.

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.

Who Will Take Medicine Unless He Knows He Is In The Grip Of Disease?

I May Repeat 'do As You Would Be Done By' Till I Am Black In The Face, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbor As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbor As Myself Till I Learn To Love God;and I Cannot Learn To Love God Except By Learning To Obey Him.

The More Often He Feels Without Acting, The Less He Will Be Able Ever To Act, And, In The Long Run, The Less He Will Be Able To Feel.

God Doesn't Want Something From Us. He Simply Wants Us.

Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

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

Friendship Is The Greatest Of Worldly Goods. Certainly To Me It Is The Chief Happiness Of Life.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

He Didn't Call His Father And Mother 'father' And 'mother' But Harold And Alberta. They Were Very Up To Date And Advanced People. They Were Vegetarians, Non-smokers And Teetotalers, And Wore A Special Kind Of Underclothes. In Their House There Was Very Little Furniture And Very Few Clothes On The Beds And The Windows Were Always Open.

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

We Seek An Enlargement Of Our Being. We Want To Be More Than Ourselves . . . We Want To See With Other Eyes, To Imagine With Other Imaginations, To Feel With Other Hearts, As Well As With Our Own . . . We Demand Windows.

If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be; If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All

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.

This Moment Contains All Moments.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

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.)

Wouldn't It Be Dreadful If Some Day In Our Own World, At Home, Men Start Going Wild Inside, Like The Animals Here, And Still Look Like Men, So That You'd Never Know Which Were Which.

The Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility...according To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride. Unchastity, Anger, Greed, Drunkenness, And All That, Are Mere Flea Bites In Comparison: It Was Through Pride That The Devil Became The Devil: Pride Leads To Every Other Vice: It Is The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

Humility, After The First Shock, Is Cheerful Virtue.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

Is It Easy To Love God' Asks An Old Author. 'it Is Easy,' He Replies, 'to Those Who Do It.' I Have Included Two Graces Under The Word Charity. But God Can Give A Third. He Can Awake In Man, Towards Himself, A Supernatural Appreciative Love. This Is Of All Gifts The Most To Be Desired. Here, Not In Our Natural Loves, Nor Even In Ethics, Lies The True Centre Of All Human And Angelic Life. With This All Things Are Possible.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact.

A Society In Which Conjugal Infidelity Is Tolerated Must Always Be In The Long Run A Society Adverse To Women.

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

Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

You Must Therefore Zealously Guard In His Mind The Curious Assumption 'my Time Is My Own'. Let Him Have The Feeling That He Starts Each Day As The Lawful Possessor Of Twenty-four Hours. Let Him Feel As A Grievous Tax That Portion Of This Property Which He Has To Make Over To Him Employers, And As A Generous Donation That Further Portion Which H Allows To Religious Duties. But What He Must Never Be Permitted To Doubt Is That The Total From Which These Deductions Have Been Made Was, In Some Mysterious Sense, His Own Personal Birthright.

This Is A Book About Something

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not. We Cannot Compete, In Simplicity With People Who Are Inventing Religions. How Could We? We Are Dealing With Fact. Of Course Anyone Can Be Simple If He Has No Facts To Bother About.

A Dogmatic Belief In Objective Value Is Necessary To The Very Idea Of A Rule Which Is Not Tyranny Or An Obedience Which Is Not Slavery.

I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.

If Christianity Is Only One More Bit Of Good Advice, Then Christianity Is Of No Importance.

At A Well In A Yard They Met A Man Who Was Beating A Boy. The Stick Burst Into A Flower In The Mans Hand. He Tried To Drop It, But It Stuck To His Hand. His Arm Became A Branch, His Body The Trunk Of A Tree, His Feet Took Root.

When The Opposite Of Your Prayer Occurs, Your Prayer Hasn't Been Ignored; It's Been Considered & Refused For Your Ultimate Good.

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