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Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.
-C. S. Lewis
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Now The Story Of

C. S. Lewis
Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.
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Real
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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.
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Devils Are Depicted With Bats' Wings And Good Angels With Birds' Wings, Not Because Anyone Holds That Moral Deterioration Would Be Likely To Turn Feathers Into Membrane, But Because Most Men Like Birds Better Than Bats.
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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.
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The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike...unless We Return To The Crude And Nursery-like Belief In Objective Values, We Perish.
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God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There. There Is No Such Thing.
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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.
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Most Of Us Need The Crutch At Times; But Of Course It Is Idiotic To Use The Crutch When Our Own Legs (our Own Loves, Tastes, Habits Etc.) Can Do The Journey On Their Own.
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A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line.
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To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are 'on' Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.
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Unless The Religious Claims Of The Bible Are Again Acknowledged, Its Literary Claims Will, I Think, Be Given Only 'mouth Honour' And That Decreasingly.
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There Is, Hidden Or Flaunted, A Sword Between The Sexes Till An Entire Marriage Reconciles Them.
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God Has Landed On This Enemy-occupied World In Human Form...the Perfect Surrender And Humiliation Was Undergone By Christ: Perfect Because He Was God, Surrender And Humiliation Because He Was Man.
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Did I Hate Him, Then? Indeed, I Believe So. A Love Like That Can Grow To Be Nine-tenths Hatred And Still Call Itself Love.
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Prayer Is Either A Sheer Illusion Or A Personal Contact Between Embryonic, Incomplete Persons (ourselves) And The Utterly Concrete Person.
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Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You.'
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No Man Can Be An Exile If He Remembers That All The World Is One City.
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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.
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Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.
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You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.
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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.
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Aslan's Instructions Always Work; There Are No Exceptions.
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[milton's] Argument Is (a) St. Augustine Was Wrong In Thinking God's Only Purpose In Giving Adam A Female, Instead Of A Male, Companion, Was Copulation. For (b) There Is A "peculiar Comfort" In The Society Of Man And Woman "beside, (i.e. In Addition To, Apart From) The Genial Bed"; And (c) We Know From Scripture That Something Analogous To "play" Or "slackening The Cords" Occurs Even In God. That Is Why The Song Of Songs Describes A Thousand Raptures...far On The Hither Side Of Carnal Enjoyment.
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I Cannot Understand How A Man Can Appear In Print Claiming To Disbelieve Everything That He Presupposes When He Puts On The Surplice. I Feel It Is A Form Of Prostitution.
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The Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal.
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Non-christians Seem To Think That The Incarnation Implies Some Particular Merit Or Excellence In Humanity. But Of Course It Implies Just The Reverse: A Particular Demerit And Depravity. No Creature That Deserved Redemption Would Need To Be Redeemed. They That Are Whole Need Not The Physician. Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.
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When You Go To Church You Are Really Listening In To The Secret Wireless From Our Friends.
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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.
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You Can Begin As If Nothing Had Ever Gone Wrong. White As Snow.
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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.
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Believe In God Like You Believe In The Sunrise. Not Because You Can See It, But Because You Can See All It Touches.
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Talk To Me About The Truth Of Religion And I'll Listen Gladly. Talk To Me About The Duty Of Religion And I'll Listen Submissively. But Don't Come Talking To Me About The Consolations Of Religion Or I Shall Suspect That You Don't Understand.
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From The Moment A Creature Becomes Aware Of God As God And Of Itself As Self, The Terrible Alternative Of Choosing God Or Self For The Centre Is Opened To It.
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Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.
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The Birth Of Christ Is The Central Event In The History Of The Earth-- The Very Thing The Whole Story Has Been About.
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Once When I Had Remarked On The Affection Quite Often Found Between Cat And Dog, My Friend Replied, "yes. But I Bet No Dog Would Ever Confess It To The Other Dogs.
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Not That I Am (i Think) In Much Danger Of Ceasing To Believe In God. The Real Danger Is Of Coming To Believe Such Dreadful Things About Him. The Conclusion I Dread Is Not 'so There's No God After All,' But 'so This Is What God's Really Like. Deceive Yourself No Longer.
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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.
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What We Call Man's Power Over Nature Turns Out To Be A Power Exercised By Some Men Over Other Men With Nature As Its Instrument.
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There Is No Use In Talking As If Forgiveness Were Easy. For We Find That The Work Of Forgiveness Has To Be Done Over And Over Again.
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When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.
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If Devils Exist, Their First Aim Is To Give You An Anesthetic -- To Put You Off Your Guard. Only If That Fails, Do You Become Aware Of Them.
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I Never Heard Weeping Like That Before Or After; Not From A Child, Nor A Man Wounded In The Palm, Nor A Tortured Man, Nor A Girl Dragged Off To Slavery From A Taken City. If You Heard The Woman You Most Hate In The World Weep So, You Would Go To Comfort Her. You Would Fight Your Way Through Fire And Spears To Reach Her. And I Knew Who Wept, And What Had Been Done To Her, And Who Had Done It.
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The Grave And The Image Are Equally Links With The Irrecoverable And Symbols For The Unimaginable.
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I Wish They Would Remember That The Charge To Peter Was "feed My Sheep", Not "try Experiments On My Rats", Or Even "teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks".
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A Christian Is Not Someone Who Never Goes Wrong, But One Who Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Again, Because The Christ-life Is Inside Him.
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Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.
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God Has Infinite Attention To Spare For Each One Of Us.
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First Be Sure That You Know Exactly What You Want To Say. Then Be Sure You Have Said Exactly That.
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The Absent Are Easily Refuted.
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The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.
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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?
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A Society In Which Conjugal Infidelity Is Tolerated Must Always Be In The Long Run A Society Adverse To Women.
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If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.
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Good People Know About Both Good And Evil: Bad People Do Not Know About Either.
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If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.
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But As For Aslan Himself, The Beavers And The Children Didn't Know What To Do Or Say When They Saw Him. People Who Have Not Been In Narnia Sometimes Think That A Thing Cannot Be Good And Terrible At The Same Time. If The Children Had Ever Thought So, They Were Cured Of It Now. For When They Tried To Look At Aslan's Face They Just Caught A Glimpse Of The Golden Mane And The Great, Royal, Solemn, Overwhelming Eyes; And Then They Found They Couldn't Look At Him And Went All Trembly.
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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?
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The Gap Between Those Who Worship Different Gods Is Not So Wide As The Gap Between Those Who Worship And Those Who Don't.
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It's So Large" "it's The World Dear, Did You Think It'd Be Small?" "smaller
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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.
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In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.
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But Pride Always Means Enmity -- It Is Enmity. And Not Only Enmity Between Man And Man, But Enmity To God.
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For His Mind Was Full Of Forlorn Hopes, Death-or-glory Charges, And Last Stands.
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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.
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Dance And Game Are Frivolous, Unimportant Down Here; For "down Here" Is Not Their Natural Place. Here, They Are A Moment's Rest From The Life We Were Placed Here To Live. But In This World Everything Is Upside Down. That Which, If It Could Be Prolonged Here, Would Be A Truancy, Is Likest That Which In A Better Country Is The End Of Ends. Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.
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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.
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To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.
Love
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There Are Only Two Kinds Of People In The End: Those Who Say To God, "thy Will Be Done," And Those To Whom God Says, In The End, "thy Will Be Done." All That Are In Hell, Choose It. Without That Self-choice There Could Be No Hell. No Soul That Seriously And Constantly Desires Joy Will Ever Miss It. Those Who Seek Find. Those Who Knock It Is Opened.
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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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One Always Feel Better When One Has Made Up One's Mind.
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Never, Never Pin Your Whole Faith On Any Human Being: Not If He Is The Best And Wisest In The Whole World. There Are Lots Of Nice Things You Can Do With Sand; But Do Not Try Building A House On It.
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Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.
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And Above All, You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Panelling…the Question Should Never Be: ‘do I Like That Kind Of Service?’ But ‘are These Doctrines True: Is Holiness There? Does My Conscience Move Me Towards This? Is My Reluctance To Move To This Door Due To My Pride, Or My Mere Taste, Or My Personal Dislike For This Particular Door-keeper?
Moving
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Doors
Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.
Christian
Pain
World
Until The Theologians And The Ordained Clergy Begin To Communicate With Ordinary People In The Vernacular, In A Way That They Can Understand, I’m Going To Have To Do This Sort Of Thing.
People
Ordinary
Way
Lucy Woke Out Of The Deepest Sleep You Can Imagine, With The Feeling That The Voice She Liked Best In The World Had Been Calling Her Name.
Sleep
Names
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If You Don't Listen To Theology, That Won't Mean You Have No Ideas About God, It Will Mean You Have A Lot Of Wrong Ones.
Mean
Ideas
Theology
The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.
Brain
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Atheism
Yes, Pride Is A Perpetual Nagging Temptation. Keep On Knocking It On The Head, But Don't Be Too Worried About It. As Long As One Knows One Is Proud, One Is Safe From The Worst Form Of Pride.
Pride
Long
Temptation
Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.
Share
Traveller
Fellows
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.
Morning
Memories
Heart
Novelty May Fix Our Attention Not Even On The Service But On The Celebrant. You Know What I Mean. Try As One May To Exclude It, The Question "what On Earth Is He Up To Now?" Will Intrude. It Lays One's Devotion Waste. There Is Really Some Excuse For The Man Who Said, "i Wish They'd Remember That The Charge To Peter Was Feed My Sheep; Not Try Experiments On My Rats, Or Even, Teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks.
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Mean
Men
Humility Is Self-forgetfulness.
Humility
Self
Forgetfulness
There Have Been Men Before Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself, As If The Good Lord Had Nothing To Do But To Exist. There Have Been Some Who Were So Preoccupied With Spreading Christianity That They Never Gave A Thought To Christ.
Men
Care
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God Doesn't Want Something From Us. He Simply Wants Us.
Want Something
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Want
I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.
Believe
Would Be
Chance
There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.... Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses. If He Is Your Christian Neighbor He Is Holy In Almost The Same Way, For In Him Also Christ Verse Latitat - The Glorifier And The Glorified, Glory Himself, Is Truly Hidden.
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Ideally, We Should Like To Define A Good Book As One Which 'permits, Invites, Or Compels' Good Reading
Book
Reading
Permit
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.
Intelligent
Laughing
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Crying Is All Right In Its Way While It Lasts. But You Have To Stop Sooner Or Later, And Then You Still Have To Decide What To Do.
Decision
Religion
Way
I Want God, Not My Idea Of God.
Ideas
Want
Aslan" Said Lucy "you're Bigger". "that Is Because You Are Older, Little One" Answered He. "not Because You Are?" "i Am Not. But Every Year You Grow, You Will Find Me Bigger".
Years
Littles
Bigger
The Very Condition Of Having Friends Is That We Should Want Something Else Besides Friends. Where The Truthful Answer To The Question "do You See The Same Truth?" Would Be "i See Nothing And I Don't Care About The Truth; I Only Want A Friend," No Friendship Can Arise - Though Affection Of Course May. There Would Be Nothing For The Friendship To Be About; And Friendship Must Be About Something, Even If It Were Only An Enthusiasm For Dominoes Or White Mice. Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.
Want Something
White
Would Be
[the Witch] Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor’s Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Start Working Backwards.
Cracks
Tables
Narnia
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
We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.
Strange
Sin
Illusion
Got To Start By Finding It, Have We? Can't Start By Looking For It, I Suppose?
Findings
The Longer We Stay In Hell, The More We Become Attached To It.
Hell
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.
Moving
Leaving
Humanity
Omnipotence Means Power To Do All That Is Intrinsically Possible, Not To Do The Intrinsically Impossible. You May Attribute Miracles To Him, But Not Nonsense.
Mean
Omnipotence
Miracle
Aren't All These Notes The Senseless Writings Of A Man Who Won't Accept The Fact That There Is Nothing We Can Do With Suffering Except To Suffer It?
Writing
Men
Suffering
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?
Beach
Sea
Waves Breaking
A Voice Had Begun To Sing. It Was Very Far Away And Digory Found It Hard To Decide From What Direction It Was Coming. Sometimes It Seemed To Come From All Directions At Once. Sometimes He Almost Thought It Was Coming Out Of The Earth Beneath Them. Its Lower Notes Were Deep Enough To Be The Voice Of The Earth Herself. There Were No Words. It Was Hardly A Tune. But It Was Beyond Comparison, The Most Beautiful Sound He Had Ever Heard.
Beautiful
Voice
Nephew
Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.
Thinking
Giving
Advice
I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.
Helping
Praying
Because I Can
I Can Say A Prayer While Washing My Teeth, But That Does Not Mean I Should Wash My Teeth In Church.
Prayer
Mean
Church
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.
Self
Vices
Feckless
You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can't Give.
Omnipotence
Giving
Capacity
When The Author Walks On The Stage The Play Is Over. God Is Going To Invade, All Right...something So Beautiful To Some Of Us And So Terrible To Others That None Of Us Will Have Any Choice Left? For This Time It Will Be God Without Disguise...it Will Be Too Late Then To Choose Your Side. There Is No Use Saying You Choose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.
Beautiful
Lying
Play
We Ought To Give Thanks For All Fortune: If It Is Good, Because It Is Good; If Bad, Because It Works In Us Patience, Humility, Contempt Of This World And The Hope Of Our Eternal Country.
Country
Humility
Giving
A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.
Art
Poetry
Literature
It's Always Winter But It's Never Christmas.
Sadness
Winter
Misery
‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior
Selfish
Humble
Conceited
God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks To Us In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains.
Christian
Pain
Speak
Most Of Us Know What We Should Expect To Find In A Dragon's Lair, But, As I Said Before, Eustace Had Read Only The Wrong Books. They Had A Lot To Say About Exports And Imports And Governments And Drains, But They Were Weak On Dragons.
Book
Government
Dragons
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.
Faith
God
Christian
We May Note In Passing That He (jesus) Was Never Regarded As A Mere Moral Teacher. He Did Not Produce That Effect On Any Of The People Who Actually Met Him. He Produced Mainly Three Effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Admiration.
Christian
Teacher
Jesus
We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, 'blessed Are They That Mourn,' And I Accept It. I've Got Nothing That I Hadn't Bargained For. Of Course It Is Different When The Thing Happens To Oneself, Not To Others, And In Reality, Not Imagination.
Grief
Blessed
Reality
You Must See That If Two Things Are Alike, Then It Is A Further Question Whether The First Is Copied From The Second, Or The Second From The First, Or Both From A Third.
Two
Firsts
Thirds
To Excuse What Can Really Produce Good Excuses Is Not Christian Charity; It Is Only Fairness. To Be A Christian Means To Forgive The Inexcusable In You.
Christian
Mean
Forgiving
As To...old Composers Like Schubert Or Beethoven, I Imagine That, While Modern Music Expresses Both Feeling, Thought And Imagination, They Expressed Pure Feeling. And You Know All Day Sitting At Work, Eating, Walking, Etc., You Have Hundreds Of Feelings That Can't Be Put Into Words. And That Is Why I Think That In A Sense Music Is The Highest Of The Arts, Because It Really Begins Where The Others Leave Off.
Art
Thinking
Imagination
The Christian View Is That Men Were Created To Be In A Certain Relationship To God (if We Are In That Relation To Him, The Right Relation To One Another Will Follow Inevitably).
Christian
Men
Views
All Names Will Soon Be Restored To Their Proper Owners.
Names
Owners
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
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
Jesus
Son
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
Forgiveness
Thinking
Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Get Neither.
Motivational
Godly
Christian Inspirational
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
Selfish
Keys
You Are Guilty Of No Evil, Ransom Of Thulcandra, Except A Little Fearfulness. For That, The Journey You Go On Is Your Pain, And Perhaps Your Cure: For You Must Be Either Mad Or Brave Before It Is Ended.
Pain
Fear
Journey
It Takes All Sorts To Make A World; Or A Church. This May Be Even Truer Of A Church. If Grace Perfects Nature It Must Expand All Our Natures Into The Full Richness Of The Diversity Which God Intended When He Made Them, And Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.
Diversity
Heaven
Grace
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 Regard God As An Airman Regards His Parachute; It's There For Emergencies But He Hopes He'll Never Have To Use It.
Wisdom
Use
Emergencies
We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.
Eye
Punishment
Lazarus
A Perfect Man Would Never Act From A Sense Of Duty; He’d Always Want The Right Thing More Than The Wrong One. Duty Is Only A Substitute For Love (of God And Of Other People) Like A Crutch Which Is A Substitute For A Leg. Most Of Us Need The Crutch At Times; But Of Course It Is Idiotic To Use The Crutch When Our Own Legs (our Own Loves, Tastes, Habits Etc.) Can Do The Journey On Their Own.
Journey
Men
People
Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.
Share
We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe.
Believe
It Is After You Have Realized That There Is A Real Moral Law, And A Power Behind The Law, And That You Have Broken That Law And Put Yourself Wrong With That Power -- It Is After All This, And Not A Moment Sooner, That Christianity Begins To Talk.
Real
Law
Broken
We Make Men Without Chests And Expect From Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst.
Men
Laughing
Honor
Education Is Only The Most Fully Conscious Of The Channels Whereby Each Generation Influences The Next.
Next
Generations
Influence
Actually It Seems To Me That One Can Hardly Say Anything Either Bad Enough Or Good Enough About Life.
Say Anything
Good Enough
Enough
We Have Failed To Practise Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.
People
Behaviour
Kind
The New Testament Does Not Envisage Solitary Religion; Regular Assembly For Worship Is Everywhere In The Epistles.
Doe
Worship
Assembly
The Student Is Half Afraid To Meet One Of The Great Philosophers Face To Face. He Feels Himself Inadequate And Thinks He Will Not Understand Him. But If He Only Knew, The Great Man, Just Because Of His Greatness, Is Much More Intelligible Than His Modern Commentator. The Simplest Student Will Be Able To Understand, If Not All, Yet A Very Great Deal Of What Plato Said; But Hardly Anyone Can Understand Some Modern Books On Platonism.
Plato
Book
Greatness
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
A Glimpse Is Not A Vision. But To A Man On A Mountain Road By Night, A Glimpse Of The Next Three Feet Of Road May Matter More Than A Vision Of The Horizon.
Night
Men
Feet
In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.
Song
Thinking
Light
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!
Heart
Angel
Men
They Say, 'the Coward Dies Many Times'; So Does The Beloved. Didn't The Eagle Find A Fresh Liver To Tear In Prometheus Every Time It Dined?
Eagles
Tears
Coward
There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.
Losing Someone
Someone You Love
Might
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.
Strong
Writing
Lust
They Tell Me, Lord, That When I Seem To Be In Speech With You. Since But One Voice Is Heard, It
Prayer
Voice
Speech
This Is My Password," Said The King As He Drew His Sword. "the Light Is Dawning, The Lie Broken. Now Guard Thee, Miscreant, For I Am Tirian Of Narnia.
Kings
Lying
Light
Each Day We Are Becoming A Creature Of Splendid Glory Or One Of Unthinkable Horror.
Inspirational
Each Day
Becoming
For Narnia And For Aslan!
Narnia
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Lion Witch Wardrobe
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.
Wise
Reality
Men
Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.
Age
Youth
Surface
It Means That Though The Witch Knew The Deep Magic, There Is A Magic Deeper Still That She Did Not Know. Her Knowledge Goes Back Only To The Dawn Of Time. But If She Could Have Looked A Little Further Back, Into The Stillness And Darkness Before Time Began, She Would Have Read There A Different Incantation. She Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor's Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Work Backwards.
Faith
Inspiration
Mean
To Fight In Another Man's Armour Is Something More Than To Be Influenced By His Style Of Fighting.
Fighting
Men
Style
The Value Of The Myth Is That It Takes All The Things We Know And Restores To Them The Rich Significance Which Has Been Hidden By ‘the Veil Of Familiarity.’ The Child Enjoys His Cold Meat, Otherwise Dull To Him, By Pretending It Is Buffalo, Just Killed With His Own Bow And Arrow. And The Child Is Wise. The Real Meat Comes Back To Him More Savory For Having Been Dipped In A Story…by Putting Bread, Gold, Horse, Apple, Or The Very Roads Into A Myth, We Do Not Retreat From Reality: We Rediscover It.
Wise
Horse
Children
[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.
Mean
Self
Training
You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not While You Are Sleeping. You Can See Mistakes In Arithmetic When Your Mind Is Working Properly; While You Are Making Them You Cannot See Them. Good People Know About Both Bad And Evil; Bad People Do Not Know About Either.
Motivational
Mistake
Sleep
We All Want Progress, But If You're On The Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing An About-turn And Walking Back To The Right Road; In That Case, The Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is The Most Progressive.
Motivational
Live Life
Mean
The Distinction Between Pretending You Are Better Than You Are And Beginning To Be Better In Reality Is Finer Than Moral Sleuth Hounds Conceive.
Reality
Morality
Pretending
They Call Him Aslan In That Place," Said Eustace. "what A Curious Name!" "not Half So Curious As Himself," Said Eustace Solemnly.
Names
Half
Curious
Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.
Fun
Thinking
People
There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.
Gnats
People
Ordinary
Only A Bad Person Needs To Repent: Only A Good Person Can Repent Perfectly.
Needs
Good Person
Repent
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.
Believe
Mind
Alive
To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.
Kings
Stars
Queens
And As Jill Gazed At Its Motionless Bulk, She Realized That She Might As Well Have Asked The Whole Mountain To Move Aside For Her Convenience.
Moving
Mountain
Might
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
Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.
Childhood
Adults
Approval
When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place.
Inspirational
Blessed
Blessing
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
All Your Life An Unattainable Ecstasy Has Hovered Just Beyond The Grasp Of Your Consciousness. The Day Is Coming When You Will Wake To Find, Beyond All Hope, That You Have Attained It, Or Else, That It Was Within Your Reach And You Have Lost It Forever.
Forever
Unattainable
Consciousness
The Worst Attitude Of All Would Be The Professional Attitude Which Regards Children In The Lump As A Sort Of Raw Material Which We Have To Handle.
Children
Attitude
Would Be
Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses.
Faith
Blessed
Inspiration
If You Make The Same Guess Often Enough It Ceases To Be A Guess And Becomes A Scientific Fact. This Is The Inductive Method.
Facts
Enough
Method
I Have Discovered That The People Who Believe Most Strongly In The Next Life Do The Most Good In The Present One.
Life
Believe
People
Reason Is The Natural Order Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning.
Order
Imagination
Literature
We Don't Have A Soul. We Are A Soul. We Happen To Have A Body.
Soul
Body
Happens
The Son Of God Became A Man To Enable Men To Become Sons Of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis
Son
Men
Christianity
I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)
Land
Atmosphere
Promise
All The Delights Of Sense, Or Heart, Or Intellect, With Which You Could Once Have Tempted Him, Even The Delights Of Virtue Itself, Now Seem To Him In Comparison But As The Half Nauseous Attractions Of A Raddled Harlot Would Seem To A Man Who Hears That His True Beloved Whom He Has Loved All His Life And Whom He Had Believed To Be Dead Is Alive And Even Now At His Door.
Heart
Men
Doors
It Is Natural For Us To Wish That God Had Designed For Us A Less Glorious And Less Arduous Destiny; But Then We Are Wishing Not For More Love But For Less.
Destiny
Wish
Natural
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.
Caring
Men
Two
Once You Become Aware That The Main Business That You Are Here For Is To Know God, Most Of Life's Problems Fall Into Place Of Their Own Accord. J.i. Packer Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Will Get Neither.
Fall
Heaven
Earth
That Will Not Be The Time For Choosing: It Will Be The Time When We Discover Which Side We Really Have Chosen, Whether We Realized It Before Or Not. Now, Today, This Moment, Is Out Chance To Chose The Right Side. God Is Holding Back To Give Us That Chance. It Will Not Last Forever. We Must Take It Or Leave It.
Giving
Forever
Today
Well!' Said Puddleglum, Rubbing His Hands. 'this Is Just What I Needed. If These Chaps Don't Teach Me To Take A Serious View Of Life, I Don't Know What Will.
Views
Hands
Serious
The Man Is A Humbug — A Vulgar, Shallow, Self-satisfied Mind, Absolutely Inaccessible To The Complexities And Delicacies Of The Real World. He Has The Journalist's Air Of Being A Specialist In Everything, Of Taking In All Points Of View And Being Always On The Side Of The Angels: He Merely Annoys A Reader Who Has The Least Experience Of Knowing Things, Of What Knowing Is Like. There Is Not Two Pence Worth Of Real Thought Or Real Nobility In Him. But He Isn't Dull.
Real
Angel
Men
God Allows Us To Experience The Low Points Of Life In Order To Teach Us Lessons That We Could Learn In No Other Way.
Order
Religion
Lessons
'useful,' And 'necessity' Was Always 'the Tyrant's Plea'.
Freedom
Tyrants
Liberty
Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.
Art
Holding On
Reason
This Is One Of The Miracles Of Love: It Gives A Power Of Seeing Through Its Own Enchantments And Yet Not Being Disenchanted.
Love
Giving
Miracle
The Great Thing, If One Can, Is To Stop Regarding All The Unpleasant Things As Interruptions Of One's 'own,' Or 'real' Life. The Truth Is Of Course That What One Calls The Interruptions Are Precisely One's Real Life -- The Life God Is Sending One Day By Day.
Real
One Day
Truth Is
You Have Gone Into The Temple...and Found Him, As Always, There.
Gone
Temples
Found
Through Pride The Devil Became The Devil. Pride Leads To Every Vice, It's The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.
Pride
Mind
Devil
God Whispers In Our Pleasures, But Shouts In Our Pain.
Pain
Pleasure
Pain And Pleasure
Man Has Got To Take Charge Of Man.... Then Real Education, Including Pre-natal Education. By Real Education I Mean One That Has No 'take-it-or-leave-it' Nonsense. A Real Education Makes The Patient What It Wants Infallibly: Whatever He Or His Parents Try To Do About It. Of Course, It'll Have To Be Mainly Psychological At First. But We'll Get On To Biochemical Conditioning Int He End And Direct Manipulation Of The Brain.
Education
Real
Mean
It Certainly Is My Opinion That A Book Worth Reading Only In Childhood Is Not Worth Reading Even Then.
Reading
Childhood
Stories
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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