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Once You Were A Child. Once You Knew What Inquiry Was For. There Was A Time When You Asked Questions Because You Wanted Answers, And Were Glad When You Had Found Them. Become A Child Again, Even Now... You Have Gone Wrong. Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth.

-C. S. Lewis

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Once You Were A

C. S. Lewis

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Once You Were A Child. Once You Knew What Inquiry Was For. There Was A Time When You Asked Questions Because You Wanted Answers, And Were Glad When You Had Found Them. Become A Child Again, Even Now... You Have Gone Wrong. Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth.

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More From C. S. Lewis

A Man Who Is Eating Or Lying With His Wife Or Preparing To Go To Sleep In Humility, Thankfulness And Temperance, Is, By Christian Standards, In An Infinitely Higher State Than One Who Is Listening To Bach Or Reading Plato In A State Of Pride.

Monarchy Can Easily Be "debunked," But Watch The Faces, Mark Well The Debunkers. These Are The Men Whose Taproot In Eden Has Been Cut: Whom No Rumour Of The Polyphony, The Dance, Can Reach - Men To Whom Pebbles Laid In A Row Are More Beautiful Than An Arch. Where Men Are Forbidden To Honour A King They Honour Millionaires, Athletes Or Film Stars Instead: For Spiritual Nature, Like Bodily Nature, Will Be Served; Deny It Food And It Will Gobble Poison.

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.

You Can Get A Large Audience Together For A Strip-tease Act—that Is, To Watch A Girl Undress On The Stage. Now Suppose You Come To A Country Where You Could Fill A Theatre By Simply Bringing A Covered Plate On To The Stage And Then Slowly Lifting The Cover So As To Let Every One See, Just Before The Lights Went Out, That It Contained A Mutton Chop Or A Bit Of Bacon, Would You Not Think That In That Country Something Had Gone Wrong With The Appetite For Food?

I Sometimes Wonder Whether All Pleasures Are Not Substitutes For Joy.

A Catholic Priest, A Jewish Rabbi, And A Muslim Mullah All Walk Into A Bar, And The Bartender Says: - What Is This, A Joke? - Сhurch Is The Only Organization That Exists Primarily For The Benefit Of Non-members.

As Venus Within Eros Does Not Really Aim At Pleasure, So Eros Does Not Aim At Happiness. We May Think He Does, But When He Is Brought To The Test It Proves Otherwise... For It Is The Very Mark Of Eros That When He Is In Us We Had Rather Share Unhappiness With The Beloved Than Be Happy On Any Other Terms.

We Do Not Want Merely To See Beauty... We Want Something Else Which Can Hardly Be Put Into Words- To Be United With The Beauty We See, To Pass Into It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Bathe In It, To Become Part Of It. That Is Why We Have Peopled Air And Earth And Water With Gods And Goddesses, And Nymphs And Elves.

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

And I Say Also This. I Do Not Think The Forest Would Be So Bright, Nor The Water So Warm, Nor Love So Sweet, If There Were No Danger In The Lakes.

Something Of God... Flows Into Us From The Blue Of The Sky, The Taste Of Honey, The Delicious Embrace Of Water Whether Cold Or Hot, And Even From Sleep Itself.

In Those Days Mr. Sherlock Holmes Was Still Living In Baker Street And The Bastables Were Looking For Treasure In The Lewisham Road.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'

You're A Mere Chick. I Remember You When You Were A Egg. Don't Come Trying To Teach Me, Sir. Crabs And Crumpets!

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

No Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally – And Often Far More – Worth Reading At The Age Of Fifty And Beyond.

Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. Evil Is A Parasite, Not An Original Thing.

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

Every Story Of Conversion Is The Story Of A Blessed Defeat.

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.

The Question Is Not What We Intended Ourselves To Be, But What He Intended Us To Be When He Made Us.

A Cold, Self-righteous Prig Who Goes Regularly To Church May Be Far Nearer To Hell Than A Prostitute.

Who Can Duly Adore That Love Which Will Open The High Gates To A Prodigal Who Is Brought In Kicking, Struggling, Resentful, And Darting His Eyes In Every Direction For A Chance Of Escape? The Words Compelle Intrare, Compel Them To Come In, Have Been So Abused By Wicked Men That We Shudder At Them; But, Properly Understood, They Plumb The Depth Of The Divine Mercy. The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Man, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.

Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is. ... We Never Find Out The Strength Of The Evil Impulse Inside Us Until We Try To Fight It: And Christ, Because He Was The Only Man Who Never Yielded To Temptation, Is Also The Only Man Who Knows To The Full What Temptation Means—the Only Complete Realist.

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

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

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.

He Is Not The Soul Of Nature, Nor Any Part Of Nature. He Inhabits Eternity: He Dwells In A High And Holy Place: Heaven Is His Throne, Not His Vehicle, Earth Is His Footstool, Not His Vesture. One Day He Will Dismantle Both And Make A New Heaven And Earth. He Is Not To Be Identified Even With The 'divine Spark' In Man. He Is 'god And Not Man.

By Repenting, One Acknowledges Them As Sins-therefore Not To Be Repeated.

What We Called Love Down There Was Mostly The Craving To Be Loved. In The Main I Loved You For My Own Sake: Because I Needed You...we Shall Have No Need For One Another Now: We Can Begin To Love Truly.

Christianity Does Not Involve The Belief That All Things Were Made For Man. It Does Involve The Belief That God Loves Man And For His Sake Became Man And Died.

A Proud Man Is Always Looking Down On Things And People; And, Of Course, As Long As You Are Looking Down, You Cannot See Something That Is Above You.

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

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe Is A Price Worth Paying For Free Will--that Is, For Making A Live World In Which Creatures Can Do Real Good Or Harm And Something Of Real Importance Of Real Importance Can Happen, Instead Of A Toy World Which Only Moves When He Pulls The Strings--then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

Only The Skilled Can Judge The Skillfulness, But That Is Not The Same As Judging The Value Of The Result.

That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Part Of Eternal Reality.

Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

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.

To Admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] Is To Give One's Vote Not Only For A World Of Misery, But Also For A World Of Lies And Propaganda, Of Wishful Thinking, Of Incessant Autobiography.

Once A Man Is United To God, How Could He Not Live Forever?

The Knight Is A Man Of Blood And Iron, A Man Familiar With The Sight Of Smashed Faces And The Ragged Stumps Of Lopped-off Limbs; He Is Also A Demure, Almost A Maidenlike, Guest In Hall, A Gentle, Modest, Unobtrusive Man. He Is Not A Compromise Or Happy Mean Between Ferocity And Meekness; He Is Fierce To The Nth And Meek To The Nth.

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

When The Author Walks Onto The Stage, The Play Is Over

The Enemy Will Not See You Vanish Into God's Company Without An Effort To Reclaim You.

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.

What You Want Is Practice, Practice, Practice. It Doesn’t Matter What We Write (at Least This Is My View) At Our Age, So Long As We Write Continually As Well As We Can. I Feel That Every Time I Write A Page Either Of Prose Or Of Verse, With Real Effort, Even If It’s Thrown Into The Fire The Next Minute, I Am So Much Further On.

Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said.

Even In Literature And Art, No Man Who Bothers About Originality Will Ever Be Original: Whereas If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth (without Caring Twopence How Often It Has Been Told Before) You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Become Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

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?

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, The First Step Is To Realize One Is Proud. Nothing Can Be Done Before It.

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

[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.

We Were Talking Of Dragons, Tolkien And I In A Berkshire Bar. The Big Workman Who Had Sat Silent And Sucked His Pipe All The Evening, From His Empty Mug With Gleaming Eye Glanced Towards Us: "i Seen 'em Myself!" He Said Fiercely.

Don't Judge A Man By Where He Is, Because You Don't Know How Far He Has Come.

If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business.

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

To Move With The Times Is, Of Course, To Go Where All Times Go.

To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are 'on' Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

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!

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Of Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You. It Is Easy To Say You Believe A Rope To Be Strong And Sound As Long As You Are Merely Using It To Cord A Box. But Suppose You Had To Hang By That Rope Over A Precipice. Wouldn't You Then First Discover How Much You Really Trusted It?

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Few Men Looked On Her Without Becoming, In A Certain Fashion, Her Lovers. But It Was The Kind Of Love That Made Them Not Less True, But Truer, To Their Own Wives.

Nothing Is Yet In Its True Form.

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.

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.

Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends?

Now Sir, Said The Bulldog In His Business-like Way. 'are You A Animal, Vegetable, Or Mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew

And Since We Cannot Deceive The Whole Human Race All The Time, It Is Most Important Thus To Cut Every Generation Off From All Others; For Where Learning Makes A Free Commerce Between The Ages There Is Always The Danger That The Characteristic Errors Of One May Be Corrected By The Characteristic Truths Of Another.

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.

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

When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place.

The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

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.

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

But I Remember More Dearly Autumn Afternoons In Bottoms That Lay Intensely Silent Under Old Great Trees

Each Time You Fall He'll Pick You Up. He Knows Your Own Efforts Are Never Going To Bring You Anywhere Near Perfection

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.

She Looked At A Silver Birch: It Would Have A Soft, Showery Voice And Would Look Like A Slender Girl, With Hair Blown All About Her Face And Fond Of Dancing. She Looked At The Oak: He Would Be A Wizened, But Hearty, Old Man With A Frizzled Beard And Warts On His Fact And Hands, With Hair Growing Out Of The Warts. She Looked At The Beech Under Which She Was Standing. Ah! --she Would Be The Best Of All. She Would Be A Gracious Goddess, Smooth And Stately, The Lady Of The Wood.

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Them.

The Value Of The Old Testament May Be Dependant On What Seems Its Imperfection. It May Repel One Use In Order That We May Be Forced To Use It In Another Way-to Find The Word In It...to Re-live, While We Read, The Whole Jewish Experience Of God's Gradual And Graded Self-revelation, To Feel The Very Contentions Between The Word And The Human Material Through Which It Works.

One Road Leads Home And A Thousand Roads Lead Into The Wilderness.

Because God Created The Natural - Invented It Out Of His Love And Artistry - It Demands Our Reverence.

Friends Are Like Coals In A Fire - Together, They Glow; Apart, They Grow Cold.

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

Peter, High King Of Narnia," Said Aslan. "shut The Door.

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

Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

The Only People Who Hate Escapism Are Jailers.

Christ Did Not Die For Man Because They Were Intrinsically Worth Dying For, But Because He Is Intrinsically Love, And Therefore Loves Infinitely.

The Claim To Equality, Outside Of The Strictly Political Field, Is Made Only By Those Who Feel Themselves To Be In Some Way Inferior.

Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Get Neither.

Christian Inspirational

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

The Books Or The Music In Which We Thought The Beauty Was Located Will Betray Us If We Trust To Them; It Was Not In Them, It Only Came Through Them,and What Came Through Them Was Longing. These Things—the Beauty, The Memory Of Our Own Past—are Good Images Of What We Really Desire; But If They Are Mistaken For The Thing Itself They Turn Into Dumb Idols,breaking The Hearts Of Their Worshippers. For They Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

Unless Thought Is Valid We Have No Reason To Believe In The Real Universe.

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.

It Is A Very Funny Thing That The Sleepier You Are, The Longer You Take About Getting To Bed.

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

And That's Why, Gentleman, If Your Little Girl Doesn't Come Up To Scratch, It Will Be Our Painful Duty To Cut All Your Throats. Merely In A Way Of Business, As You Might Say, And No Offense, I Hope.

Fine Feelings, New Insights, Greater Interest In ʿreligionʾ Mean Nothing Unless They Make Our Actual Behavior Better.

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.

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.

Never Use Abstract Nouns When Concrete Ones Will Do. If You Mean “more People Died” Don’t Say “mortality Rose.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues. There Is No Getting Away From It; The Old Christian Rule Is, "either Marriage, With Completely Faithfulness To Your Partner, Or Else Total Abstinence."

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

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

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers. If You Are Thinking Of Becoming A Christian, I Warn You You Are Embarking On Something Which Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

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.

Courtship Is The Time For Sowing Those Seeds Which Will Grow Up Ten Years Into Domestic Hatred.

If You Never Take Risks, You'll Never Accomplish Great Things. Everybody Dies, But Not Everyone Has Lived.

The Desire For Bad Art Is The Desire Bred Of Habit: Like The Smoker's Desire For Tobacco, More Marked By The Extreme Malaise Of Denial Than By Any Very Strong Delight In Fruition.

I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road.

We Long For More And God's Promise Is That There Is More Awaiting Us. More To Delight Us Than We Will Ever Exhaust.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

It Is Always The Novice Who Exaggerates.

Screwtape Letters

Experience: That Most Brutal Of Teachers. But You Learn, My God Do You Learn.

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

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can't Give.

You Must Not Do, You Must Not Even Try To Do, The Will Of The Father Unless You Are Prepared To 'know Of The Doctrine'.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.

It May Be Hard For An Egg To Turn Into A Bird: It Would Be A Jolly Sight Harder For It To Learn To Fly While Remaining An Egg. We Are Like Eggs At Present. And You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

Miracles Do Not, In Fact, Break The Laws Of Nature.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

But Suppose You Struggle Through To The Good And Find That It Also Is Dreadful? How If Food Itself Turns Out To Be The Very Thing You Can't Eat, And Home The Very Place You Can't Live, And Your Very Comforter The Person Who Makes You Uncomfortable? Then, Indeed, There Is No Rescue Possible: The Last Card Has Been Played.

If We Ignore It The Truth That God Is Love May Slyly Come To Mean For Us The Converse, That Love Is God.

The True Reader Reads Every Work Seriously In The Sense That He Reads It Whole-heartedly, Makes Himself As Receptive As He Can. But For That Very Reason He Cannot Possibly Read Every Work Solemly Or Gravely. For He Will Read 'in The Same Spirit That The Author Writ.'... He Will Never Commit The Error Of Trying To Munch Whipped Cream As If It Were Venison.

If Our Deepest Desires Cannot Be Satisfied In This World, Then We Must Have Been Made For Another World.

It Is A Poor Thing To Strike Our Colors To God When The Ship Is Going Down Under Us; A Poor Thing To Come To Him As A Last Resort, To Offer Up 'our Own' When It Is No Longer Worth Keeping. If God Were Proud He Would Hardly Have Us On Such Terms: But He Is Not Proud, He Stoops To Conquer, He Will Have Us Even Though We Have Shown That We Prefer Everything Else To Him.

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?

Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectations And Memory.

In My Experience, It Is Affection That Creates This Taste, Teaching Us First To Notice, Then To Endure, Then To Smile At, Then To Enjoy, And Finally To Appreciate The People Who 'happen To Be There.' Made For Us? Thank God, No. They Are Themselves, Odder Than You Could Have Believed And Worth Far More Than We Guessed.

Theology Is Like A Map. Merely Learning And Thinking About The Christian Doctrines, If You Stop There, Is Less Real And Less Exciting Than The Sort Of Thing My Friend Got In The Desert. Doctrines Are Not God: They Are Only A Kind Of Map. But That Map Is Based On The Experience Of Hundreds Of People Who Really Were In Touch With God--experiences Compared With Which Many Thrills Of Pious Feelings You And I Are Likely To Get On Our Own Are Very Elementary And Very Confused. And Secondly, If You Want To Get Any Further You Must Use The Map.

The Whole Journey Was Odd And Dream-like -- The Roaring Stream, The Wet Grey Grass, The Glimmering Cliffs Which They Were Approaching, And Always The Glorious, Silently Pacing Beast Ahead.

Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.

I Was Not Born To Be Free---i Was Born To Adore And Obey.

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

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

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

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege Of Individuality.. .here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

It Is So Fatally Easy To Confuse An Aesthetic Appreciation Of The Spiritual Life With The Life Itself-to Dream That You Have Waked, Washed, And Dressed And Then To Find Yourself Still In Bed.

The Most Precious Gift That Marriage Gave Me Was The Constant Impact Of Something Very Close And Intimate, Yet All The Time Unmistakably Other, Resistant - In A Word, Real.

Let There Be Wicked Kings And Beheadings, Battles And Dungeons, Giants And Dragons, And Let The Villans Be Soundly Killed At The End Of The Book. I Think It Is Possible That By Confining Your Child To The Blameless Stories Of Life In Which Nothing At All Alarming Ever Happens, You Would Fail To Banish The Terrors, And Would Succeed In Banishing All That Can Ennoble Them Or Make Them Endurable.

Remember, He Is Not, Like You, A Pure Spirit. Never Having Been A Human (oh That Abominable Advantage Of The Enemy's) You Don't Realize How Enslaved They Are To The Pressure Of The Ordinary.

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

Almost Certainly God Is Not In Time. His Life Does Not Consist Of Moments One Following Another...ten-thirty-- And Every Other Moment From The Beginning Of The World--is Always Present For Him. If You Like To Put It This Way, He Has All Eternity In Which To Listen To The Split Second Of Prayer Put Up By A Pilot As His Plane Crashes In Flames.

An 'impersonal God'-well And Good. A Subjective God Of Beauty, Truth And Goodness, Inside Our Own Heads-better Still. A Formless Life-force Surging Through Us, A Vast Power Which We Can Tap-best Of All. But God Himself, Alive, Pulling At The Other End Of The Cord, Perhaps Approaching At An Infinite Speed, The Hunter, King, Husband-that Is Quite Another Matter.

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.

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.

Evil Can Be Undone, But It Cannot 'develop' Into Good. Time Does Not Heal It. The Spell Must Be Unwound, Bit By Bit, 'with Backward Mutters Of Dissevering Power' - Or Else Not.

You Die And Die And Then You Are Beyond Death.

You Can't Just Go On Being A Good Egg. You Must Either Hatch Or Go Bad!

And The Seriousness With Which The Other Party Takes My Words Always Raises The Doubt Whether I Have Taken Them Seriously Enough Myself.

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

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.

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

Daughter Of Eve From The Far Land Of Spare Oom Where Eternal Summer Reigns Around The Bright City Of War Drobe, How Would It Be If You Came And Had Tea With Me?

The Basic Proposal Of The New Education Is To Be That Dunces And Idlers Must Not Be Made To Feel Inferior To Intelligent And Industrious Pupils. That Would Be 'undemocratic.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

The Most Valuable Thing The Psalms Do For Me Is To Express The Same Delight In God Which Made David Dance.

To Interest Is The First Duty Of Art; No Other Excellences Will Ever Begin To Compensate For Failure In This.

The True Enjoyments Must Be Spontaneous And Compulsive And Look To No Remoter End.

This Is A Book About Something

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

The World Does Not Need More Christian Literature. What It Needs Is More Christians Writing Good Literature.

And There’s Also ‘to Him That Hath Shall Be Given.’ After All, You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can’t Give. Perhaps Your Own Passion Temporarily Destroys The Capacity.

Disobedience To Conscience Makes Conscience Blind.

As Image And Apprehension Are In Organic Unity, So, For A Christian, Are Human Body And Human Soul.

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

I Can Imagine No Man Who Will Look With More Horror On The End Than A Conscientious Revolutionary Who Has, In A Sense Sincerely, Been Justifying Cruelties And Injustices Inflicted On Millions Of His Contemporaries By The Benefits Which He Hopes To Confer On Future Generations: Generations Who, As One Terrible Moment Now Reveals To Him, Were Never Going To Exist. Then He Will See The Massacres, The Faked Trials, The Deportations, To Be All Ineffaceably Real, An Essential Part, His Part, In The Drama That Has Just Ended: While The Future Utopia Had Never Been Anything But A Fantasy.

We Delight To Praise What We Enjoy Because The Praise Not Merely Expresses But Completes The Enjoyment; It Is Its Appointed Consummation. It Is Not Out Of Compliment That Lovers Keep On Telling One Another How Beautiful They Are; The Delight Is Incomplete Till It Is Expressed.

Submit To Death, Death Of Your Ambitions And Favorite Wishes Every Day And Death Of Your Whole Body In The End: Submit With Every Fiber Of Your Being, And You Will Find Eternal Life. Keep Back Nothing. Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Be Really Yours. Nothing In You That Has Not Died Will Ever Be Raised From The Dead. . . Look To Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

The Son Of God Became A Man To Enable Men To Become Sons Of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis

Long Before History Began We Men Have Got Together Apart From The Women And Done Things. We Had Time.

Enemy Occupied Territory Is What The World Is.

It Still Remains True That No Justification Of Virtue Will Enable A Man To Be Virtuous.

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?

If You Thirst You May Drink.

The Prayer Preceding All Prayers Is 'may It Be The Real I Who Speaks. May It Be The Real Thou That I Speak To.'

All Men Alike Stand Condemned, Not By Alien Codes Of Ethics, But By Their Own, And All Men Therefore Are Conscious Of Guilt.

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

Oh, I'm A Dangerous Criminal, I Am,' Said The Dwarf Cheerfully.

I Came Alive When I Started Loving You.

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

Gone! And You And I Quite Crestfallen. It’s Always Like That, You Can’t Keep Him; It’s Not As If He Were A Tame Lion.

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.

Of All Tyrannies, A Tyranny Sincerely Exercised For The Good Of Its Victims May Be The Most Oppressive. It Would Be Better To Live Under Robber Barons Than Under Omnipotent Moral Busybodies. The Robber Baron's Cruelty May Sometimes Sleep, His Cupidity May At Some Point Be Satiated; But Those Who Torment Us For Our Own Good Will Torment Us Without End For They Do So With The Approval Of Their Own Conscience.

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.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Toward Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again. For However Important Chastity (or Courage, Or Truthfulness, Or Any Other Virtue) May Be, This Process Trains Us In Habits Of The Soul Which Are More Important Still. It Cures Our Illusions About Ourselves And Teaches Us To Depend On God. We Learn, On The One Hand, That We Cannot Trust Ourselves Even In Our Best Moments, And, On The Other, That We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven.

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

Periods' Are Largely An Invention Of The Historians. The Poets Themselves Are Not Conscious Of Living In Any Period And Refuse To Conform To The Scheme.

Power To Translate Is The Test Of Having Really Understood One's Own Meaning.

Puddleglum,' They've Said, 'you're Altogether Too Full Of Bobance And Bounce And High Spirits. You've Got To Learn That Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Ell Pie. You Want Something To Sober You Down A Bit. We're Only Saying It For Your Own Good, Puddleglum.' That's What They Say. Now A Job Like This --a Journey Up North Just As Winter's Beginning Looking For A Prince That Probably Isn't There, By Way Of Ruined City Nobody's Ever Seen-- Will Be Just The Thing. If That Doesn't Steady A Chap, I Don't Know What Will.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable. How Many Hours Are In A Mile? Is Yellow Square Or Round? Probably Half The Questions We Ask - Half Our Great Theological And Metaphysical Problems - Are Like That.

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.

Pure, Spiritual, Intellectual Love Shot Form Their Faces Like Barbedlightning. It Was So Unlike The Love We Experience That Its Expressioncould Easily Be Mistaken For Ferocity.

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.... The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep On Bringing Us Back, Time After Time, To The Old Simple Principles Which We Are All So Anxious Not To See; Like Bringing A Horse Back And Back To The Fence It Has Refused To Jump Or Bringing A Child Back And Back To The Bit In Its Lesson That It Wants To Shirk.

Be Good, Sweet Maid, And Don't Forget That This Involves Being As Clever As You Can.

I Could Never Have Gone Far In Any Science Because On The Path Of Every Science The Lion Mathematics Lies In Wait For You.

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