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Nothing, Not Even The Best And Noblest, Can Go On As It Now Is. Nothing, Not Even What Is Lowest And Most Bestial, Will Not Be Raised Again If It Submits To Death. It Is Sown A Natural Body, It Is Raised A Spiritual Body. Flesh And Blood Cannot Come To The Mountains [heaven]. Not Because They Are Too Rank, But Because They Are Too Weak. What Is A Lizard Compared With A Stallion? Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

-C. S. Lewis

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Nothing, Not Even The

C. S. Lewis

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Nothing, Not Even The Best And Noblest, Can Go On As It Now Is. Nothing, Not Even What Is Lowest And Most Bestial, Will Not Be Raised Again If It Submits To Death. It Is Sown A Natural Body, It Is Raised A Spiritual Body. Flesh And Blood Cannot Come To The Mountains [heaven]. Not Because They Are Too Rank, But Because They Are Too Weak. What Is A Lizard Compared With A Stallion? Lust Is A Poor, Weak, Whimpering Whispering Thing Compared With That Richness And Energy Of Desire Which Will Arise When Lust Has Been Killed.

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If War Is Ever Lawful, Then Peace Is Sometimes Sinful.

Certainly, Lu. Whatever You Like,' Said Peter Unexpectedly. This Was Encouraging, But As Peter Instantly Rolled Round And Went To Sleep Again It Wasn't Much Use.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.

We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.

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The False Religion Of Lust Is Baser Than The False Religion Of Mother-love Or Patriotism Or Art: But Lust Is Less Likely To Be Made Into A Religion.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than He Is Of Any Other Slacker.

The 'frankness' Of People Sunk Below Shame Is A Very Cheap Frankness.

No Justification Of Virtue Will Enable A Man To Be Virtuous. Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism. I Had Sooner Play Cards Against A Man Who Was Quite Skeptical About Ethics, But Bred To Believe That ‘a Gentleman Does Not Cheat’, Than Against An Irreproachable Moral Philosopher Who Had Been Brought Up Among Sharpers.

Clearly One Must Read Every Good Book At Least Once Every Ten Years.

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

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

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin.

Friendship Is...the Sort Of Love One Can Imagine Between Angels.

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.

Atheism Turns Out To Be Too Simple. If The Whole Universe Has No Meaning, We Should Never Have Found Out That It Has No Meaning.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed-this Is The Hardest Of All Temptations To Resist

The Proper Rewards Are Not Simply Tacked On To The Activity For Which They Are Given, But Are The Activity Itself In Consummation.

I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer.

You Can Put This Another Way By Saying That While In Other Sciences The Instruments You Use Are Things External To Yourself (things Like Microscopes And Telescopes), 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 - Like The Moon Seen Through A Dirty Telescope. That Is Why Horrible Nations Have Horrible Religions: They Have Been Looking At God Through A Dirty Lens.

Christianity, If False, Is Of No Importance, And If True, Of Infinite Importance. The Only Thing It Cannot Be Is Moderately Important.

I Have Been Feeling Very Much Lately That Cheerful Insecurity Is What Our Lord Asks Of Us.

The Imagined Beings Have Their Insides On The Outside; They Are Visible Souls. And Man As A Whole, Man Pitted Against The Universe, Have We Seen Him At All Till We See That He Is Like A Hero In A Fairy Tale?

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did, He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is)... Continue Seeking Him With Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

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.

In The Ancient World Individuals Have Sold Themselves As Slaves, In Order To Eat. So In Society. Here Is A Witch-doctor Who Can Save Us From The Sorcerers - A War-lord Who Can Save Us From The Barbarians - A Church That Can Save Us From Hell. Give Them What They Ask, Give Ourselves To Them Bound And Blindfold, If Only They Will! Perhaps The Terrible Bargain Will Be Made Again. We Cannot Blame Men For Making It. We Can Hardly Wish Them Not To. Yet We Can Hardly Bear That They Should.

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

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God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself. He Himself Is The Fuel Our Spirits Were Designed To Burn, Or The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On. There Is No Other. That Is Why It Is Just No Good Asking God To Make Us Happy In Our Own Way Without Bothering About Religion. God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There.

We Have Not Long To Live In Any Event. Let Us Spend What Is Left In Seeking The Unpeopled World Behind The Sunrise.

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

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

All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

Dearest Daughter. I Knew You Would Not Be Long In Coming To Me. Joy Shall Be Yours.

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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.

The Typical Expression Of Opening Friendship Would Be Something Like, 'what? You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One!

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

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One Always Feel Better When One Has Made Up One's Mind.

Sleeping On A Dragon's Hoard With Greedy, Dragonish Thoughts In His Heart, He Had Become A Dragon Himself.

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

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

The Gap Between Those Who Worship Different Gods Is Not So Wide As The Gap Between Those Who Worship And Those Who Don't.

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.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

The Choice Of Every Lost Soul Can Be Expressed In The Words "better To Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven." There Is Always Something They Insist On Keeping, Even At The Price Of Misery.

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

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.

Never Exaggerate. Never Say More Than You Really Mean.

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

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

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

When The Time Comes To You At Which You Will Be Forced At Last To Utter The Speech Which Has Lain At The Center Of Your Soul For Years, Which You Have, All That Time, Idiot-like, Been Saying Over And Over, You'll Not Talk About The Joy Of Words. I Saw Well Why The Gods Do Not Speak To Us Openly, Nor Let Us Answer. Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

I Willingly Believe That The Damned Are, In One Sense, Successful, Rebels To The End; That The Doors Of Hell Are Locked On The Inside.

To What Will You Look For Help If You Will Not Look To That Which Is Stronger Than Yourself?

Every Disability Conceals A Vocation, If Only We Can Find It, Which Will 'turn The Necessity To Glorious Gain.

Time Is The Very Lens Through Which Ye See - Small And Clear, As Men See Through The Wrong End Of A Telescope - Something That Would Otherwise Be Too Big For Ye To See At All. That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Parts Of Eternal Reality.

"i Wish I Had Never Been Born," She Said. "what Are We Born For?" "for Infinite Happiness," Said The Spirit. "you Can Step Out Into It At Any Moment..."

Perfect Goodness Can Never Debate About The End To Be Attained, And Perfect Wisdom Cannot Debate About The Means Most Suited To Achieve It.

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.

Good People Know About Both Good And Evil: Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

The Truth Is, Of Course, That What One Regards As Interruptions Are Precisely One's Life.

No Doubt Those Who Really Founded Modern Science Were Usually Those Whose Love Of Truth Exceeded Their Love Of Power.

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

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

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

There Is Nothing Indulgent About The Moral Law. It Is As Hard As Nails. If God Is Like The Moral Law, Then He Is Not Soft.

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gift.

Your People Eat Dry And Tasteless Flesh But It Is Off Plates As Smooth As Ivory And As Round As The Sun.

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

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)

Do I Think Well Of Myself, Think Myself A Nice Chap? Well, I Am Afraid I Sometimes Do (and Those Are, No Doubt, My Worst Moments).

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.

Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.

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

All Day I Have Been Tossed And Whirled In A Preposterous Happiness; Was It An Elf In The Blood? Or A Bird In The Brain? Or Even Part Of The Cloudily Crested, Fifty-league-long, Loud, Uplifted Wave Of A Journeying Angels Transit Over And Through My Heart?

The Opposite Of Love Is Not Hate, But Power

If Naturalism Were True Then All Thoughts Whatever Would Be Wholly The Result Of Irrational Causes. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

We Are Finite And God Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

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

I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.

The Naturalists Have Been Engaged In Thinking About Nature. They Have Not Attended To The Fact That They Were Thinking. The Moment One Attends To This It Is Obvious That One's Own Thinking Cannot Be Merely A Natural Event, And That Therefore Something Other Than Nature Exists. The Supernatural Is Not Remote Or Abstruse; It Is A Matter Of Daily And Hourly Experience, As Intimate As Breathing.

The Difference [god's] Timelessness Makes Is That This Now (which Slips Away From You Even As You Say The Word Now) Is For Him Infinite.

He (god) Loved Us Not Because We Are Lovable, But Because He Is Love.

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

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.

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

God Lends Us A Little Of His Reasoning Powers And That Is How We Think: He Puts A Little Of His Love Into Us And That Is How We Love One Another. When You Teach A Child Writing, You Hold Its Hand While It Forms The Letters: That Is, It Forms The Letters Because You Are Forming Them. We Love And Reason Because God Loves And Reasons And Holds Our Hand While We Do It.

Sanity ... Had It Ever Been More Than A Convention -- A Comfortable Set Of Blinkers, An Agreed Mode Of Wishful Thinking, Which Excluded From Our View The Full Strangeness And Malevolence Of The Universe We Are Compelled To Inhabit?

I Think God Wants Us To Love Him More, Not To Love Others Less.

If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.

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?

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

Once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

The Demand Of The Loveless And The Self-imprisoned That They Should Be Allowed To Blackmail The Universe: That Till They Consent To Be Happy (on Their Own Terms) No One Else Shall Taste Joy: That Theirs Should Be The Final Power; That Hell Should Be Able To Veto Heaven.

Selfishness Has Never Been Admired.

Once In Those Very Early Days My Brother Brought Into The Nursery The Lid Of A Biscuit Tin Which He Had Covered With Moss And Garnished With Twigs And Flowers So As To Make It A Toy Garden Or A Toy Forest. That Was The First Beauty I Ever Knew. What The Real Garden Had Failed To Do, The Toy Garden Did. It Made Me Aware Of Nature-not, Indeed, As A Storehouse Of Forms And Colors But As Something Cool, Dewy, Fresh, Exuberant....as Long As I Live My Imagination Of Paradise Will Retain Something Of My Brother's Toy Garden.

Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.

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

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

Keep Clear Of Psychiatrists Unless You Know That They Are Also Christians. Otherwise They Start With The Assumption That Your Religion Is An Illusion And Try To 'cure' It: And This Assumption They Make Not As Professional Psychologists But As Amateur Philosophers.

All Human Beings Pass Away. Do Not Let Your Happiness Depend On Something You May Lose. If Love Is To Be A Blessing, Not A Misery, It Must Be For The Only Beloved Who Will Never Pass Away.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

On Many Questions And Specially In View Of The Marriage Bed, The Puritans Were The Indulgent Party, . . . They Were Much More Chestertonian Than Their Adversaries. The Idea That A Puritan Was A Repressed And Repressive Person Would Have Astonished Sir Thomas More And Luther About Equally.

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege, Of Individuality.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

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