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No Time For Better Words, No Time To Unsay Anything. -til We Have Faces
-C. S. Lewis
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No Time For Better

C. S. Lewis
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No Time For Better Words, No Time To Unsay Anything. -til We Have Faces

Understanding the Quote: "no time for better words, no time to unsay anything. -til we..."

This quote by C. S. Lewis reflects deeply on the theme of faces. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Faces, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how C. S. Lewis interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis is celebrated for insightful thoughts on faces and motivation. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Faces
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She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.
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He Who Has Not Forgiven An Enemy Has Never Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.
Life
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It Is Important Early In Life To Acquire The Power Of Reading Sense Wherever You Happen To Be.
Reading
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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.
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All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out Of Date.
Wisdom
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Childishness
Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.
Desire
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The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.
Beautiful
Life Is
Beauty Of Life
If Education Is Beaten By Training, Civilization Dies.
Civilization
Training
Beaten
It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.
May
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Agnostics Talk Cheerfully Of Man's Search For God But They Might As Well Talk About The Mouse's Search For The Cat.
Cat
Men
Might
At Home, Besides Being Peter Or Jane, We Also Bear A General Character; Husband Or Wife, Brother Or Sister, Chief, Colleague Or Subordinate. Not Among Friends. It Is An Affair Of Disentangled, Or Stripped, Minds. Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.
Brother
Husband
Home
We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.
People
Ordinary
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When The Voice Of Your Friend Or The Page Of Your Book Sinks Into Democratic Equality With The Pattern Of The Wallpaper, The Feel Of Your Clothes, Your Memory Of Last Night, And The Noises From The Road, You Are Falling Asleep. The Highly Selective Consciousness Enjoyed By Fully Alert Men, With All Its Builded Sentiments And Consecrated Ideals, Has As Much To Be Called Real As The Drowsy Chaos, And More.
Dream
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Be Confident Small Immortals. You Are Not The Only Voice That All Things Utter, Nor Is There Eternal Silence In The Places Where You Cannot Come.
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Hell Begins With A Grumbling Mood, Always Complaining, Always Blaming Others.
Grumbling
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Blame
Our Passions Are Not Too Strong, They Are Too Weak. We Are Far Too Easily Pleased.
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Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.
Screwtape Letters
Suspicion
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The Human Mind Is Generally Far More Eager To Praise Or Dispraise Than It Is To Describe And Define.
Mind
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You Would Not Call A Man Humane For Ceasing To Set Mousetraps If He Did So Because He Believed There Were No Mice In The House.
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Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. The Smallest Good Act Today Is The Capture Of A Strategic Point From Which, A Few Months Later, You May Be Able To Go On To Victories You Never Dreamed Of. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.
Loss
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A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Wouldn't Be A Great Moral Teacher. He'd Be Either A Lunatic On A Level With A Man Who Says He's A Poached Egg Or Else He'd Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse.
Teacher
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You Can't Get A Cup Of Tea Large Enough Or A Book Long Enough To Suit Me.
Book
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You Can Begin As If Nothing Had Ever Gone Wrong. White As Snow.
White
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Humans Are Amphibians - Half Spirit And Half Animal. As Spirits They Belong To The Eternal World, But As Animals They Inhabit Time.
Time
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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.
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No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers
People
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We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.
Blessed
Suffering
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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.
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Before God Closed In On Me, I Was Offered What Now Appears A Moment Of Wholly Free Choice. But I Feel My Decision Was Not So Important. I Was The Object Rather Than The Subject In This Affair.
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For The Christian, There Are, Strictly Speaking, No Chances. A Secret Master Of The Ceremonies Has Been At Work.
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If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.
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God Whispers In Our Pleasures, But Shouts In Our Pain.
Pain
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Pain And Pleasure
Progress Means Movement In A Desired Direction, And We Do Not All Desire The Same Things For Our Species.
Mean
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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.
Father
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If These Holy Places, Things, And Days Cease To Remind Us, If They Obliterate Our Awareness That All Ground Is Holy And Every Bush (could We But Perceive It) A Burning Bush, Then The Hallows Begin To Do Harm. Hence Both The Necessity, And The Perennial Danger, Of 'religion.'
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No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.
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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?
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It Is Funny How Mortals Always Picture Us As Putting Things Into Their Minds: In Reality Our Best Work Is Done By Keeping Things Out.
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There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.
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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.
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A Concentrated Mind And A Sitting Body Make For Better Prayer Than A Kneeling Body And A Mind Half Asleep.
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The Assumption That Things Which Have Been Conjured In The Past Will Always Be Conjured In The Guiding Principle Not Of Rational But Of Animal Behavior.
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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.
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All The Things That Have Ever Deeply Possessed Your Soul Have Been But Hints Of It, Tantalizing Glimpses, Promises Never Quite Fulfilled, Echoes That Died Away Just As They Caught Your Ear. But If It Should Really Become Manifest - If There Ever Came An Echo That Did Not Die Away But Swelled Into The Sound Itself - You Would Know It. Beyond All Possibility Of Doubt You Would Say 'here At Last Is The Thing I Was Made For.'
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[to Have Faith In Christ] Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice. Thus If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way. Not Doing These Things In Order To Be Saved, But Because He Has Begun To Save You Already. Not Hoping To Get To Heaven As A Reward For Your Actions, But Inevitably Wanting To Act In A Certain Way Because A First Faint Gleam Of Heaven Is Already Inside You.
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Scripture Itself Is Not Systematic; The New Testament Shows The Greatest Variety. God Has Shown Us That He Can Use Any Instrument. Balaam's Ass, You Remember, Preached A Very Effective Sermon In The Midst Of His 'hee-haws.'
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Watchin' And Listenin' Is The Thing At Present; Not Talking.
Talking
Not Talking
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.
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Once People Stop Believing In God, The Problem Is Not That They Will Believe In Nothing; Rather, The Problem Is That They Will Believe Anything.
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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.
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Nothing Less Will Shake A Man — Or At Any Rate A Man Like Me — Out Of His Merely Verbal Thinking And His Merely Notional Beliefs. He Has To Be Knocked Silly Before He Comes To His Senses. Only Torture Will Bring Out The Truth. Only Under Torture Does He Discover It Himself.
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When All The Suns And Nebulae Have Passed Away, Each One Of You Will Still Be Alive.
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No One Returns From Christianity To The Same State He Was Before Christianity But Into A Worse State: The Difference Between A Pagan And An Apostate Is The Difference Between An Unmarried Woman And An Adulteress. For Faith Perfects Nature But Faith Lost Corrupts Nature. Therefore Many Men Of Our Time Have Lost Not Only The Supernatural Light But Also The Natural Light Which Pagans Possessed.
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Education Is Only The Most Fully Conscious Of The Channels Whereby Each Generation Influences The Next.
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Morality Or Duty Never Yet Made A Man Happy In Himself Or Dear To Others.
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A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.
Art
Men
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His Face Had Become Very Red And His Mouth And Fingers Were Sticky. He Did Not Look Either Clever Or Handsome, Whatever The Queen Might Say.
Queens
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You're A Mere Chick. I Remember You When You Were A Egg. Don't Come Trying To Teach Me, Sir. Crabs And Crumpets!
Remember You
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Eggs
On The Back Of Satan's Neck Is A Nail Scarred Footprint.
Nails
Necks
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We Are All Fallen Creatures And All Very Hard To Live With.
Fallen
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Hard
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.
Lasts
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Theology Offers You A Working Arrangement, Which Leaves The Scientist Free To Continue His Experiments And The Christian To Continue His Prayers.
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The Standard That Measures Two Things Is Something Different From Either. You Are, In Fact, Comparing Them Both With Some Real Morality, Admitting That There Is Such A Thing As A Real Right, Independent Of What People Think, And That Some People's Ideas Get Nearer To That Real Right Than Others.
Real
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Thinking
Some Journeys Take Us Far From Home. Some Adventures Lead Us To Our Destiny.
Adventure
Home
Journey
There Is No Good Trying To Be More Spiritual Than God. God Never Meant Man To Purely Spiritual Creature. That Is Why He Uses Material Things Like Bread And Wine To Put The New Life Into Us. We May Think This Rather Crude And Unspiritual. God Does Not: He Invented Eating. He Likes Matter. He Invented It.
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There Is, Hidden Or Flaunted, A Sword Between The Sexes Till An Entire Marriage Reconciles Them.
Sex
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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.
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Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.
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Quarrelling Means Trying To Show That The Other Man Is In The Wrong. (and) There Is No Sense In Trying To Do That Unless You And He Had Some Sort Of Agreement As To What Righ And Wrong Are.
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These, Then, Are The Two Points I Wanted To Make. First, That Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Behave In A Certain Way, And Cannot Really Get Rid Of It. Secondly, That They Do Not In Fact Behave In That Way. They Know The Law Of Nature; They Break It. These Two Facts Are The Foundation Of All Clear Thinking About Ourselves And The Universe We Live In.
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Human Culture Has Always Had To Exist Under The Shadow Of Something Infinitely More Important Than Itself. If Men Had Postponed The Search For Knowledge And Beauty Until They Were Secure, The Search Would Never Have Begun.
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That Is The Key To History. Terrific Energy Is Expended - Civilizations Are Built Up - Excellent Institutions Devised; But Each Time Something Goes Wrong. Some Fatal Flaw Always Brings The Selfish And Cruel People To The Top, And Then It All Slides Back Into Misery And Ruin. In Fact, The Machine Conks. It Seems To Start Up All Right And Runs A Few Yards, And Then It Breaks Down.
Running
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Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.
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Ideas
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If God Were A Kantian, Who Would Not Have Us Till We Came To Him From The Purest And Best Motives, Who Could Be Saved?
Motive
Saved
Ifs
Will You Come With Me To The Mountains? It Will Hurt At First, Until Your Feet Are Hardened. Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?
Hurt
Reality
Feet
The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact. The Old Myth Of The Dying God, Without Ceasing To Be A Myth, Comes Down From The Heaven Of Legend And Imagination To The Earth Of History.
Heart
Imagination
Heaven
Repentance Is Not Something God Demands Of You Before He Will Take You Back And Which He Could Let You Off If He Chose; It Is Simply A Description Of What Going Back Is Like.
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Description
We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely
Meaningful
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Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.
Abnormal
Wonderful
Norm
How Difficult It Is To Avoid Having A Special Standard For Oneself.
Christian
Hypocrite
Special
What Draws People To Be Friends Is That They See The Same Truth. They Share It.
Inspirational
People
Religion
And Yet All Loneliness, Angers, Hatreds, Envies, And Itchings That It Contains, If Rolled Into One Single Experience And Put Into The Scale Against The Least Moment Of The Joy That Is Felt By The Least In Heaven, Would Have No Weight That Could Be Registered At All. Bad Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad As Truly As Good Is Good.
Loneliness
Envy
Hatred
There Is A Difference Between A Private Devotional Life And A Corporate One. Solemnity Is Proper In Church, But Things That Are Proper In Church Are Not Necessarily Proper Outside, And Vice Versa.
Differences
Church
Vices
There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.
Losing Someone
Someone You Love
Might
I Think That If God Forgives Us We Must Forgive Ourselves. Otherwise, It Is Almost Like Setting Up Ourselves As A Higher Tribunal Than Him.
Inspirational
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Thinking
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.
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Humility Is Not Thinking Less Of Yourself, It's Thinking Of Yourself Less.
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Inspiring
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The Right Direction Leads Not Only To Peace But To Knowledge.
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There Are No Ordinary People.. It Is Immortals Whom We Joke With, Work With, Marry, Snub, And Exploit.
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People
Religion
The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.
Law
Play
Keys
A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.
Screwtape Letters
Amusing
Those Who Do Not Think About Their Own Sins Make Up For It By Thinking Incessantly About The Sins Of Others.
Motivational
Thinking
Sin
I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait.
Inspirational
Adoption
Waiting
Now We Cannot...discover Our Failure To Keep God's Law Except By Trying Our Very Hardest (and Then Failing). Unless We Really Try, Whatever We Say There Will Always Be At The Back Of Our Minds The Idea That If We Try Harder Next Time We Shall Succeed In Being Completely Good. Thus, In One Sense, The Road Back To God Is A Road Of Moral Effort, Of Trying Harder And Harder. But In Another Sense It Is Not Trying That Is Ever Going Tobring Us Home. All This Trying Leads Up To The Vital Moment At Which You Turn To God And Say, "you Must Do This. I Can't.
Home
Law
Ideas
If There Ever Was A Time That Nothing Existed, Then Nothing Would Exist Now
Ifs
It Is Quite Useless Knocking At The Door Of Heaven For Earthly Comfort. It's Not The Sort Of Comfort They Supply There.
Doors
Heaven
Useless
And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?
Memories
Years
Expectations
Christ, Who Said To The Disciples, 'you Have Not Chosen Me, But I Have Chosen You,' Can Truly Say To Every Group Of Christian Friends, 'you Have Not Chosen One Another But I Have Chosen You For One Another.'
Christian
Groups
Said
Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.
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Pain
Boys
Love Is Something More Stern And Splendid Than Mere Kindness.
Inspirational
Kindness
Love Is
For A Long Time I Used To Think This A Silly, Straw-splitting Distinction: How Could You Hate What A Man Did And Not Hate The Man? But Years Later It Occurred To Me That There Was One Man To Whom I Had Been Doing This All My Life - Namely Myself.
Hate
Silly
Men
It Is Only Our Bad Temper That We Put Down To Being Tired Or Worried Or Hungry; We Put Our Good Temper Down To Ourselves.
Wisdom
Tired
Hungry
All Hell Is Smaller Than One Pebble Of Your Earthly World; But It Is Smaller Than One Atom Of This World, The Real World.
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Religious
Real
Christianity Is Not A Patent Medicine. Christianity Claims To Give An Account Of Facts - To Tell You What The Real Universe Is Like. Its Account Of The Universe May Be True, Or It May Not, And Once The Question Is Really Before You, Then Your Natural Inquisitiveness Must Make You Want To Know The Answer. 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.
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Believe
Men
The Guide Sang: The New Age, The New Art, The New Ethic And Thought, And Fools Crying, Because It Has Begun It Will Continue As It Has Begun! The Wheel Runs Fast, Therefore The Wheel Will Run Faster For Ever, The Old Age Is Done, We Have New Lights And See Without The Sun. (though They Lay Flat The Mountains And Dry Up The Sea, Wilt Thou Yet Change, As Though God Were A God?)
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Art
Light
Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him. His Increasing Reputation, His Widening Circle Of Acquaintances, His Sense Of Importance, The Growing Pressure Of Absorbing And Agreeable Work Build Up In Him A Sense Of Being Really At Home On Earth Which Is Just What We Want.
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Men
Circles
The Very Lack Of Evidence Is Thus Treated As Evidence; The Absence Of Smoke Proves That The Fire Is Very Carefully Hidden...a Belief In Invisible Cats Cannot Be Logically Disproved Although It Does Tell Us A Good Deal About Those Who Hold It.
Cat
Fire
Doe
With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.
Happiness
Mother
Fun
Perfect Goodness Can Never Debate About The End To Be Attained, And Perfect Wisdom Cannot Debate About The Means Most Suited To Achieve It.
Mean
Perfect
Debate
The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.
Bereavement
Amputation
Beloved
The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.
Men
Religion
Church
The Higher The Stakes, The Greater The Temptation To Lose Your Temper.
Inspirational
Temptation
Stakes
Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.
Demon
God Became Man To Turn Creatures Into Sons: Not Simply To Produce Better Men Of The Old Kind But To Produce A New Kind Of Man. It Is Not Like Teaching A Horse To Jump Better And Better But Like Turning A Horse Into A Winged Creature.
Horse
Teaching
Son
The Change Which The Writing Wrought In Me (and Of Which I Did Not Write) Was Only A Beginning; Only To Prepare Me For The Gods' Surgery. They Used My Own Pen To Probe My Wound.
Writing
Used
Surgery
He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.
God
Christian
Theologian
But Why,... If You Have A Serious Comment To Make On The Real Life Of Men, Must You Do It By Talking About A Phantasmagoric Never-never Land Of Your Own? Because, I Take It, One Of The Main Things The Author Wants To Say Is That The Real Life Of Men Is Of That Mythical And Heroic Quality.
Real
Men
Talking
Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.
Men
Dying
Christ
Shall I Ever Be Able To Read That Story Again; The One I Couldn't Remember? Will You Tell It To Me, Aslan? Oh Do,do,do." "indeed,yes, I Will Tell It To You For Years And Years. But Now, Come. We Must Meet The Master Of This House.
Years
House
Stories
Mere Improvement Is Not Redemption, Though Redemption Always Improves People
People
Redemption
Improvement
A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.
Christian
Men
Repent
The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.
Heart
Mean
Acceptance
The Command "be Ye Prfect" Is Not Idealistic Gas. Nor Is It A Command To Do The Impossible. He Said (in The Bible) That We Were "gods" And He Is Going To Make Good His Words. He Will Make Us Into A God Or Goddess, A Dazzling, Radiant, Immortal Creature...a Bright Stainless Mirror Which Reflects Back To God Perfectly.
Mirrors
Perfection
Promise
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.
Ambition
Mean
Thinking
That World Is Ended, As If It Had Never Been. Let The Race Of Adam And Eve Take Warning.
Race
Warning
World
If One Has To Choose Between Reading The New Books And Reading The Old, One Must Choose The Old: Not Because They Are Necessarily Better But Because They Contain Precisely Those Truths Of Which Our Own Age Is Neglectful.
Book
Reading
Age
We Can Never Know That A Piece Of Writing Is Bad Unless We Have Begun By Trying To Read It As If It Was Very Good And Ended By Discovering That We Were Paying The Author An Undeserved Compliment.
Writing
Trying
Pieces
As St. Paul Points Out, Christ Never Meant That We Were To Remain Children In Intelligence: On The Contrary, He Told Us To Be Not Only "as Harmless As Doves," But Also "as Wise As Serpents." He Wants A Child's Heart, But A Grown-up's Head.
Wise
Children
Heart
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.
Dark
Blood
Water
Thus The Criminal Ceases To Be A Person, A Subject Of Rights And Duties, And Becomes Merely An Object On Which Society Can Work. And This Is, In Principle, How Hitler Treated The Jews. They Were Objects; Killed Not For Ill Desert But Because, On His Theories, They Were A Disease In Society. If Society Can Mend, Remake, And Unmake Men At Its Pleasure, Its Pleasure May, Of Course, Be Humane Or Homicidal. The Difference Is Important. But, Either Way, Rulers Have Become Owners.
Men
Rights
Differences
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.
Life
Heart
Eye
If They Embark On This Course The Difference Between The Old And The New Education Will Be An Important One. Where The Old Initiated, The New Merely 'conditions'. The Old Dealt With Its Pupils As Grown Birds Deal With Young Birds When They Teach Them To Fly; The New Deals With Them More As The Poultry-keeper Deals With Young Birds- Making Them Thus Or Thus For Purposes Of Which The Birds Know Nothing. In A Word, The Old Was A Kind Of Propagation-men Transmitting Manhood To Men; The New Is Merely Propaganda.
Educational
Men
Differences
Grief Is Like A Bomber Circling Round And Dropping Its Bombs Each Time The Circle Brings It Overhead; Physical Pain Is Like The Steady Barrage On A Trench In World War One, Hours If It With No Let-up For A Moment. Thought Is Never Static Pain Often Is... Is It Not Yet Enough?
Pain
War
Grief
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.
Optimistic
Thinking
Views
"welcome, Prince," Said Aslan. "do You Feel Yourself Sufficient To Take Up The Kingship Of Narnia?" "i - I Don't Think I Do, Sir," Said Caspian. "i'm Only A Kid." "good," Said Aslan. "if You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not."
Kids
Thinking
Welcome
Our Father Refreshes Us On The Journey With Some Pleasant Inns, But Will Not Encourage Us To Mistake Them For Home.
Inspirational
Life
Christian
A Clever Arrangement Of Bad Eggs Will Never Make A Good Omelet.
Clever
Eggs
Vision
Jesus Christ Did Not Say, 'go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right.'
Inspirational
Jesus
World
Emeth Came Walking Forward Into The Open Strip Of Grass Between The Bonfire And The Stable. His Eyes Were Shining, His Face Was Solemn, His Hand Was On His Sword-hilt, And He Carried His Head High. Jill Felt Like Crying When She Looked At His Face. And Jewel Whispered In The King's Ear, "by The Lion's Mane, I Almost Love This Young Warrior, Calormene Though He Be. He Is Worthy Of A Better God Than Tash.
Kings
Eye
Warrior
When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place.
Inspirational
Blessed
Blessing
In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.
Stars
Son
Our World
Actually It Seems To Me That One Can Hardly Say Anything Either Bad Enough Or Good Enough About Life.
Say Anything
Good Enough
Enough
It's No Use Telling Us That Something Was 'mysterious' Or 'loathsome' Or 'awe-inspiring' Or 'voluptuous.' By Direct Description, By Metaphor And Simile, By Secretly Evoking Powerful Associations, By Offering The Right Stimuli To Our Nerves (in The Right Degree And The Right Order), And By The Very Beat And Vowel-melody And Length And Brevity Of Your Sentences, You Must Bring It About That We, We Readers, Not You, Exclaim, 'how Mysterious!' Or 'loathsome' Or Whatever It Is. Let Me Taste For Myself, And You'll Have No Need To Tell Me How I Should React.
Powerful
Offering
Order
We Are Not Necessarily Doubting That God Will Do The Best For Us; We Are Wondering How Painful The Best Will Turn Out To Be.
Inspirational
God
Doubt
Good And Evil Increase At Compound Interest. That's Why The Little Decisions We Make Every Day Are Of Infinite Importance.
Decisions We Make
Evil
Littles
There Is Nothing Like Suspense And Anxiety For Barricading A Human's Mind Against The Enemy. He Wants Men To Be Concerned With What They Do; Our Business Is To Keep Them Thinking About What Will Happen To Them.
Men
Thinking
Focus
Isn't It Absolutely Essential To Keep A Fierce Left And Fierce Right, Both On Their Toes And Each Terrified Of The Other? That's How We Get Things Done.
Essentials
Done
Toes
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.
Son
Excess
Littles
Looking For God-or Heaven-by Exploring Space Is Like Reading Or Seeing All Shakespeare's Plays In The Hope That You Will Find Shakespeare As One Of The Characters.
Faith
Reading
Character
Liking An Author May Be As Involuntary And Improbable As Falling In Love.
Falling In Love
May
Involuntary
The Promise, Made When 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.
Long
Promise
Beloved
To Forgive The Incessant Provocations Of Daily Life - To Keep On Forgiving The Bossy Mother-in-law, The Bullying Husband, The Nagging Wife, The Selfish Daughter, The Deceitful Son - How Can We Do It? Only, I Think, By Remembering Where We Stand, By Meaning Our Words When We Say In Our Prayers Each Night, “forgive Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us.” We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse God’s Mercy For Ourselves. There Is No Hint Of Exceptions And God Means What He Says.
Daughter
Mother
Bullying
You Must Picture Me Alone In That Room In Magdalen, Night After Night, Feeling, Whenever My Mind Lifted Even For A Second From My Work, The Steady, Unrelenting Approach Of Him Whom I So Earnestly Desired Not To Meet. That Which I Greatly Feared Had At Last Come Upon Me. In The Trinity Term Of 1929 I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.
God
Night
Feelings
The State Exists Simply To Promote And To Protect The Ordinary Happiness Of Human Beings In This Life. A Husband And Wife Chatting Over A Fire, A Couple Of Friends Having A Game Of Darts In A Pub, A Man Reading A Book In His Own Room Or Digging In His Own Garden-that Is What The State Is There For. And Unless They Are Helping To Increase And Prolong And Protect Such Moments, All The Laws, Parliaments, Armies, Courts, Police, Economics, Etc., Are Simply A Waste Of Time.
Couple
Husband
Book
The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.
Heart
Should
Jewel,' He Said, 'what Lies Before Us? Horrible Thoughts Arise In My Heart. If We Had Died Before Today We Should Have Been Happy.
Lying
Heart
Jewels
Before We Can Be Cured We Must Want To Be Cured. Those Who Really Wish For Help Will Get It; But For Many Modern People Even The Wish Is Difficult.
People
Wish
Want
If Each Side Had Been Frankly Contending For Its Own Real Wish, They Would All Have Kept Within The Bounds Of Reason And Courtesy; But Just Because The Contention Is Reversed And Each Side Is Fighting The Other Side’s Battle, All The Bitterness Which Really Flows From Thwarted Self-righteousness And Obstinacy And From The Accumulated Grudges Of The Last Ten Years Is Concealed From Them By The Nominal Or Official "unselfishness" Of What They Are Doing Or, At Least, Held To Be Excused By It.
Real
Fighting
Self
Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.
Heart
Giving
People
The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles, But To Irrigate Deserts.
Education
Teacher
Teaching
I Read In A Periodical The Other Day That The Fundamental Thing Is How We Think Of God. By God Himself, It Is Not! How God Thinks Of Us Is Not Only More Important, But Infinitely More Important.
Thinking
Important
Fundamentals
To Be Ignorant And Simple Now-not To Be Able To Meet The Enemies On Their Own Ground-would Be To Throw Down Our Weapons And To Betray Our Uneducated Brethren Who Have, Under God, No Defense But Us Against The Intellectual Attacks Of The Heathen. Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.
Philosophy
Simple
Intellectual
Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.
Jobs
Writing
Wonderful
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.
Religious
People
Religion
Man Approaches God Most Nearly When He Is In One Sense Least Like God. For What Can Be More Unlike Than Fullness And Need, Sovereignty And Humility, Righteousness And Penitence, Limitless Power And A Cry For Help?
Humility
Men
Needs
Nothing In Man Is Either Worse Or Better For Being Shared With The Beasts.
Men
Beast
When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?
Real
Lying
World
Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.
Eels
Pie
Frogs
We Forgive, We Mortify Our Resentment; A Week Later Some Chain Of Thought Carries Us Back To The Original Offence And We Discover The Old Resentment Blazing Away As If Nothing Had Been Done About It At All. We Need To Forgive Our Brother Seventy Times Seven Not Only For 490 Offences But For One Offence.
Brother
Forgiving
Needs
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.
Christian
Teacher
Inspiration
I Know All About The Despair Of Overcoming Chronic Temptation. It Is Not Serious, Provided Self-offended Petulance, Annoyance At Breaking Records, Impatience, Etc., Don't Get The Upper Hand. No Amount Of Falls Will Really Undo Us If We Keep Picking Ourselves Up Each Time...the Only Fatal Thing Is To Lose One's Temper And Give Up.
Happiness
Giving Up
Fall
So Many Things--nay Every Real Thing--is Good If Only It Will Be Humble And Ordinate.
Real
Humble
Ifs
Q. What Is Your View Of The Daily Discipline Of The Christian Life - The Need For Taking Time To Be Alone With God? Lewis: "we Have Our New Testament Regimental Orders Upon The Subject. I Would Take It For Granted That Everyone Who Becomes A Christian Would Undertake This Practice. It Is Enjoined Upon Us By Our Lord; And Since They Are His Commands, I Believe In Following Them. It Is Always Just Possible That Jesus Christ Meant What He Said When He Told Us To Seek The Secret Place And To Close The Door.
Christian
Jesus
Believe
This Was Bad Grammar Of Course, But That Is How Beavers Talk When They Are Excited; I Mean, In Narnia--in Our World They Usually Don't Talk At All. - The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Mean
Our World
Lions
When We Are Such As He Can Love Without Impediment, We Shall In Fact Be Happy.
Love
Happiness
Joy
If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.
Trying
Gleam
Way
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.
Soul
Would Be
Matter
I Haven't Any Language Weak Enough To Depict The Weakness Of My Spiritual Life. If I Weakened It Enough It Would Cease To Be Language At All. As When You Try To Turn The Gas-ring A Little Lower Still, And It Merely Goes Out.
Spiritual
Trying
Weakness
The Only People Who Hate Escapism Are Jailers.
Hate
People
Escapism
Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.
Time
Done
Enough
God Can Show Himself As He Really Is Only To Real Men. And That Means Not Simply To Men Who Are Individually Good, But To Men Who Are United Together In A Body, Loving One Another, Helping One Another, Showing Him To One Another. For That Is What God Meant Humanity To Be Like; Like Players In One Band, Or Organs In One Body.
Real
Mean
Player
I Could Never Have Gone Far In Any Science Because On The Path Of Every Science The Lion Mathematics Lies In Wait For You.
Lying
Waiting
Gone
Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.
Fighting
Christianity
Poetry Most Often Communicates Emotions, Not Directly, But By Creating Imaginatively The Grounds For Those Emotions. It Therefore Communicates Something More Than The Emotion; Only By Means Of That Something More Does It Communicate The Emotion At All.
Mean
Creating
Doe
A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest.
Inspirational
Children
Powerful
If We Are Any Good We Must Always Be Working Towards The Moment At Which Our Pupils Are Fit To Become Our Critics & Rivals
Rivals
Fit
Moments
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.
Loneliness
Needs
Conscious
It Would Be Nice And Fairly Nearly True, To Say That 'from That Time Forth, Eustace Was A Different Boy.' To Be Strictly Accurate, He Began To Be A Different Boy. He Had Relapses. There Were Still Many Days When He Could Be Very Tiresome. But Most Of Those I Shall Not Notice. The Cure Had Begun.
Nice
Boys
Different
The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs. There Is Not One Of Them Which Will Not Make Us Into Devils If We Set It Up As An Absolute Guide. You Might Think Love Of Humanity In General Was Safe, But It Is Not. If You Leave Out Justice You Will Find Yourself Breaking Agreements And Faking Evidence In Trials "for The Sake Of Humanity", And Become In The End A Cruel And Treacherous Man.
Men
Thinking
Justice
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.
Men
Suffering
Needs
Regarding The Debate About Faith And Works: It's Like Asking Which Blade In A Pair Of Scissors Is Most Important.
Faith
Wisdom
Important
Ideally, We Should Like To Define A Good Book As One Which 'permits, Invites, Or Compels' Good Reading
Book
Reading
Permit
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.
War
Knights
Suffering
The Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).
Heart
Eye
Recognition
He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.
Religious
Couple
Eye
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.
Children
World
Stupidest
Friends Are Seldom Found; They Are Made.
Made
Found
We Must Stop Regarding Unpleasant Or Unexpected Things As Interruptions Of Real Life. The Truth Is That Interruptions Are Real Life.
Real
Unexpected
Truth Is
Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.
Running
Mean
Long
If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.
Doe
Watches
Would Be
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