Background Image

...

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.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Only Those Who Try

C. S. Lewis

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

It Certainly Is My Opinion That A Book Worth Reading Only In Childhood Is Not Worth Reading Even Then.

We Shall Not Be Well So Long As We Love And Admire Anything More Than We Love And Admire God.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted. And If An Infinitely Wise Being Listens To The Requests Of Finite And Foolish Creatures, Of Course He Will Sometimes Grant And Sometimes Refuse Them.

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?

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."

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.

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.

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

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

The Homemaker Has The Ultimate Career. All Other Careers Exist For One Purpose Only - And That Is To Support The Ultimate Career.

It Is No Disparagement To The Garden To Say It Will Not Fence And Weed Itself, Nor Prune Its Own Fruit Trees, Nor Roll And Cut Its Own Lawns...it Will Remain A Garden Only If Someone Does All These Things To It...if You Want To See The Difference Between [the Garden's] Contribution And The Gardener's, Put The Commonest Weed It Grows Side By Side With His Hoes Rakes, Shears, And A Packet Of Weed Killer; You Have Put Beauty, Energy, And Fecundity Beside Dead, Steril Things. Just So, Our 'decency And Common Sense' Show Grey And Deathlike Beside The Geniality Of Love.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You "love" Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did.

Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

Love May, Indeed, Love The Beloved When Her Beauty Is Lost: But Not Because It Is Lost. Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal. Love Is More Sensitive Than Hatred Itself To Every Blemish In The Beloved… Of All Powers He Forgives Most, But He Condones Least: He Is Pleased With Little, But Demands All.

Spying On People By Magic Is The Same As Spying On Them In Any Other Way.

Child, To Say The Very Thing You Really Mean, The Whole Of It, Nothing More Or Less Or Other Than What You Really Mean; That's The Whole Art And Joy Of Words.

If You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not.

The Absent Are Easily Refuted.

The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

Reason Is The Natural Order Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning.

Mental Pain Is Less Dramatic Than Physical Pain, But It Is More Common And Also More Hard To Bear. The Frequent Attempt To Conceal Mental Pain Increases The Burden: It Is Easier To Say “my Tooth Is Aching” Than To Say “my Heart Is Broken.

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

Very Often The Only Way To Get A Quality In Reality Is To Start Behaving As If You Had It Already.

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.

It Was When I Was Happiest That I Longed Most...the Sweetest Thing In All My Life Has Been The Longing...to Find The Place Where All The Beauty Came From.

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

Miracles Are A Retelling In Small Letters Of The Very Same Story Which Is Written Across The Whole World In Letters Too Large For Some Of Us To See.

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).

With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.

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.

And Men Said That The Blood Of The Stars Flowed In Her Veins

Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It.

Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing--rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

The Point Is That For Our Ancestors, The Universe Was A Picture; For Modern Physics It Is A Story.

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.

When All The Suns And Nebulae Have Passed Away, Each One Of You Will Still Be Alive.

[the Decay Of Logic Results From An] Untroubled Assumption That The Particular Is Real And The Universal Is Not.

That Fierce Imprisonment In The Self Is But The Obverse Of The Self-giving Which Is Absolute Reality.

Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

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

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

I Care Far More How Humanity Lives Than How Long. Progress, For Me, Means Increasing Goodness And Happiness Of Individual Lives. For The Species, As For Each Man, Mere Longevity Seems To Me A Contemptible Ideal.

The More Pride We Have, The More Other People’s Pride Irritates Us

Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Believe In A Certain Way, And Can't Really Get Rid Of It.

When The Whole World Is Running Towards A Cliff, He Who Is Running In The Opposite Direction Appears To Have Lost His Mind.

Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.

It Is Important Early In Life To Acquire The Power Of Reading Sense Wherever You Happen To Be.

The World Was Made Partly That There May Be Prayer; Partly That Our Prayers Might Be Answered.

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.

Jesus Produced Mainly Three Effects: Hatred, Terror, Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Approval.

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.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point, Which Means, At The Point Of Highest Reality. A Chastity Or Honesty Or Mercy Which Yields To Danger Will Be Chaste Or Honest Or Merciful Only On Conditions. Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.

If Human Life Is In Fact Ordered By A Beneficent Being Whose Knowledge Of Our Real Needs And Of The Way In Which They Can Be Satisfied Infinitely Exceeds Our Own, We Must Expect A Priori That His Operations Will Often Appear To Us Far From Beneficent And Far From Wise, And That It Will Be Our Highest Prudence To Give Him Our Confidence In Spite Of This.

Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Had Yet Been Done.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

The Guide Sang: The New Age, The New Art, The New Ethic And Thought, And Fools Crying, Because It Has Begun It Will Continue As It Has Begun! The Wheel Runs Fast, Therefore The Wheel Will Run Faster For Ever, The Old Age Is Done, We Have New Lights And See Without The Sun. (though They Lay Flat The Mountains And Dry Up The Sea, Wilt Thou Yet Change, As Though God Were A God?)

I Believe, To Be Sure, That Any Man Who Reaches Heaven Will Find That What He Abandoned (even In Plucking Out His Right Eye) Has Not Been Lost: That The Kernel Of What He Was Really Seeking Even In His Most Depraved Wishes Will Be There, Beyond Expectation, Waiting For Him In 'the High Countries'.

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

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

No Good Poem, However Confessional It May Be, Is Just A Self-expression. Who On Earth Would Claim That The Pearl Expresses The Oyster?

I Never Fully Understood It Till My Friend Professor Tolkien Asked Me The Very Simple Question, 'what Class Of Men Would You Expect To Be Most Preoccupied With, And Hostile To, The Idea Of Escape?' And Gave The Obvious Answer: Jailers.

Even In This World Of Course It Is The Stupidest Children Who Are Most Childish And The Stupidest Grown-ups Who Are Most Grown-up.

Our Problem With Desire Is That We Want Too Little.

But The Most Obvious Fact About Praise — Whether Of God Or Anything — Strangely Escaped Me. I Thought Of It In Terms Of Compliment, Approval, Or The Giving Of Honor. I Had Never Noticed That All Enjoyment Spontaneously Overflows Into Praise Unless (sometimes Even If) Shyness Or The Fear Of Boring Others Is Deliberately Brought In To Check It.

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

I Am Only Trying To Call Attention To A Fact; The Fact That This Year, Of This Month, Or, More Likely, This Very Day, We Have Failed To Practice Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

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.

And That Is Enough To Raise Your Thoughts To What May Happen When The Redeemed Soul, Beyond All Hope And Nearly Beyond Belief, Learns At Last That She Has Pleased Him Whom She Was Created To Please. There Will Be No Room For Vanity Then. She Will Be Free From The Miserable Illusion That It Is Her Doing. With No Taint Of What We Should Now Call Self-approval She Will Most Innocently Rejoice In The Thing That God Has Made Her To Be, And The Moment Which Heals Her Old Inferiority Complex Forever Will Also Drown Her Pride… Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

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.

Freedom Always Comes With A Price.

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

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

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.'

Truth And Falsehood Are Opposed; But Truth Is The Norm Not Of Truth Only But Of Falsehood Also.

Truth And Falsehood

The Birth Of Christ Is The Central Event In The History Of The Earth-- The Very Thing The Whole Story Has Been About.

Gone! ...and You And I Quite Crestfallen.

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.

The Great Thing To Remember Is That Though Our Feelings Come And Go God's Love For Us Does Not.

Christian Inspirational

Whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want

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

A Clever Arrangement Of Bad Eggs Will Never Make A Good Omelet.

Better To Be Miserable With Her Than Happy Without Her. Let Our Hearts Break Provided They Break Together. If The Voice Within Us Does Not Say This It Is Not The Voice Of Eros.

The Return From The Walk, And The Arrival Of Tea, Should Be Exactly Coincident, And Not Later Than A Quarter Past Four.

I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait.

The New Testament Writers Speak As If Christ's Achievement In Rising From The Dead Was The First Event Of Its Kind In The Whole History Of The Universe. He Is The 'first Fruits,' The Pioneer Of Life,' He Has Forced Open A Door That Has Been Locked Since The Death Of The First Man. He Has Met, Fought, And Beaten The King Of Death. Everything Is Different Because He Has Done So.

In Justifying Cruelty To Animals We Put Ourselves Also On The Animal Level. We Choose The Jungle And Must Abide By Our Choice.

Once In Our World, A Stable Had Something In It That Was Bigger Than Our Whole World.

[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.

She Stepped Out From Among Their Shifting Confusion Of Lovely Lights And Shadows. A Circle Of Grass, Smooth As A Lawn, Met Her Eyes, With Dark Trees Dancing All Around It. And Then --oh Joy! For He Was There: The Huge Lion, Shining White In The Moonlight, With His Huge Black Shadow Underneath Him.

The Assumption That Things Which Have Been Conjured In The Past Will Always Be Conjured In The Guiding Principle Not Of Rational But Of Animal Behavior.

Guiding Principles

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.

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

If You Thirst You May Drink.

The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

Unless I Believe In God, I Cannot Believe In Thought: So I Can Never Use Thought To Disbelieve In God.

Of Course Language Is Not An Infallible Guide, But It Contains, With All Its Defects, A Good Deal Of Stored Insight And Experience.

Oh God, God, Why Did You Take Such Trouble To Force This Creature Out Of Its Shell If It Is Now Doomed To Crawl Back -- To Be Sucked Back -- Into It?

I Believe That There Are Too Many Practitioners In The Church, Who Are Not Believers.

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

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.

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

It Matters Enormously If I Alienate Anyone From The Truth.

Do Not Look Sad. We Shall Meet Soon Again." "please, Aslan", Said Lucy,"what Do You Call Soon?" "i Call All Times Soon" Said Aslan; And Instantly He Was Vanished Away.

I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.

When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The World-old, World-wide Religio Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft. Protestantism,in Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes. Catholicism Is Accused Of Being Too Much Like All The Other Religions; Protestantism Of Being Insufficiently Like A Religion At All. Hence Plato, With His Transcendent Forms, Is The Doctor Of Protestants; Aristotle, With His Immanent Forms, The Doctor Of Catholics.

A Man's Physical Hunger Does Not Prove That Man Will Get Any Bread; He May Die Of Starvation On A Raft In The Atlantic. But Surely A Man's Hunger Does Prove That He Comes Of A Race Which Repairs Its Body By Eating And Inhabits A World Where Eatable Substances Exist. In The Same Way, Though I Do Not Believe (i Wish I Did) That My Desire For Paradise Proves That I Shall Enjoy It, I Think It A Pretty Good Indication That Such A Thing Exists And That Some Men Will.

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.

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.

If You Want To Get Warm You Must Stand Near The Fire: If You Want To Be Wet You Must Get Into The Water. If You Want Joy, Power, Peace, Eternal Life, You Must Get Close To, Or Even Into, The Thing That Has Them. They Are Not A Sort Of Prize Which God Could, If He Chose, Just Hand Out To Anyone.

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

The Proper Motto Is Not Be Good, Sweet Maid, And Let Who Can Be Clever, But Be Good Sweet Maid, And Don't Forget That This Involves Being As Clever As You Can. God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Any Other Slackers.

God Allows Us To Experience The Low Points Of Life In Order To Teach Us Lessons That We Could Learn In No Other Way.

Feelings, And Feelings, And Feelings. Let Me Try Thinking Instead.

There Is No Good Trying To Be More Spiritual Than God. God Never Meant Man To Purely Spiritual Creature. That Is Why He Uses Material Things Like Bread And Wine To Put The New Life Into Us. We May Think This Rather Crude And Unspiritual. God Does Not: He Invented Eating. He Likes Matter. He Invented It.

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

Your Patient Has Become Humble; Have You Drawn His Attention To The Fact? All Virtues Are Less Formidable To Us Once The Man Is Aware That He Has Them, But This Is Specially True Of Humility.

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.

Grief ... Gives Life A Permanently Provisional Feeling. It Doesn't Seem Worth Starting Anything. I Can't Settle Down. I Yawn, I Fidget, I Smoke Too Much. Up Till This I Always Had Too Little Time. Now There Is Nothing But Time. Almost Pure Time, Empty Successiveness.

Hell Begins With A Grumbling Mood, Always Complaining, Always Blaming Others.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth. What You Now Call The Free Play Of Inquiry Has Neither More Nor Less To Do With The Ends For Which Intelligence Was Given You Than Masturbation Has To Do With Marriage.

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him. Nobody Can Always Have Devout Feelings: And Even If We Could, Feelings Are Not What God Principally Cares About. Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In

Holiness Is Irresistible. If Even 10% Of The World's Population Had It The Whole World Would Be Converted And Happy Before The Year's End.

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work. The Only People Who Achieve Much Are Those Who Want Knowledge So Badly That They Seek It While The Conditions Are Still Unfavorable. Favorable Conditions Never Come.

When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed.

You Never Know What You Can Do Until You Try, And Very Few Try Unless They Have To.

Those Who Cannot Conceive Of Friendship As A Substantive Love But Only As A Disguise Or Elaboration Of Eros Betray The Fact That They Have Never Had A Friend.

Our Passions Are Not Too Strong, They Are Too Weak. We Are Far Too Easily Pleased.

If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity.

Atheists Express Their Rage Against God Although In Their View He Does Not Exist.

Christian Inspirational

Shall I Ever Be Able To Read That Story Again; The One I Couldn't Remember? Will You Tell It To Me, Aslan? Oh Do,do,do." "indeed,yes, I Will Tell It To You For Years And Years. But Now, Come. We Must Meet The Master Of This House.

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".

Your Majesty Would Have A Perfect Right To Strike Off His Head," Said Peridan. "such An Assault As He Made Puts Him On A Level With Assassins." "it Is Very True," Said Edmund. "but Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did." And He Looked Very Thoughtful.

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

You Will Not Find The Warrior, The Poet, The Philosopher Or The Christian By Staring Into His Eyes As If He Were Your Mistress: Better Fight Beside Him, Read With Him, Argue With Him, Pray With Him.

Are The Gods Not Just?' 'oh No, Child. What Would Become Us Us If They Were?

Every Age Has Its Own Outlook. It Is Specially Good At Seeing Certain Truths And Specially Liable To Make Certain Mistakes. We All, Therefore, Need The Books That Will Correct The Characteristic Mistake Of Our Own Period. And That Means The Old Books.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.

Love Is Never Wasted, For Its Value Does Not Rest Upon Reciprocity.

But Do You Really Mean, Sir," Said Peter, "that There Could Be Other Worlds-all Over The Place, Just Round The Corner-like That?" "nothing Is More Probable," Said The Profesor, Taking Off His Spectacles And Beginning To Polish Them, While He Muttered To Himself, "i Wonder What They Do Teach Them At These Schools.

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.

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

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death.

If The Universe Is So Bad...how On Earth Did Human Beings Ever Come To Attribute It To The Activity Of A Wise And Good Creator?

In A Sense It (christianity) Creates, Rather Than Solves, The Problem Of Pain, For Pain Would Be No Problem Unless Side By Side With Our Daily Experience Of This Painful World, We Had Received What We Think A Good Assurance That Ultimate Reality Is Righteousness And Loving.

We Can Never Know That A Piece Of Writing Is Bad Unless We Have Begun By Trying To Read It As If It Was Very Good And Ended By Discovering That We Were Paying The Author An Undeserved Compliment.

Those Who Are Enjoying Something, Or Suffering Something, Together, Are Companions. Those Who Enjoy Or Suffer One Another, Are Not.

You Cannot Love A Fellow Creature Fully Till You Love God.

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

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

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.

God Is Not Merely Good, But Goodness; Goodness Is Not Merely Divine, But God.

The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him And To Each Other In An Ecstasy Of Love And Delight Compared With Which The Most Rapturous Love Between A Man And A Woman On This Earth Is Mere Milk And Water. And For That They Must Be Free.

We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us.

I Am Perfectly Convinced That Whatever The Gospels Are They Are Not Legends. I Have Read A Great Deal Of Legend And I Am Quite Clear They Are Not That Sort Of Thing....christ Bent Down And Scribbled In The Dust With His Finger. Nothing Comes Of This. No One Has Based Any Doctrine On It. And The Act Of Inventing Little Irrelevant Details To Make An Imaginary Scene More Convincing Is Purely A Modern Art.

I Wonder Do The Gods Know What It Feels Like To Be A Man.

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, 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. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

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.

The Real Oxford Is A Close Corporation Of Jolly, Untidy, Lazy, Good-for-nothing Humorous Old Men, Who Have Been Electing Their Own Successors Ever Since The World Began And Who Intend To Go On With It. They'll Squeeze Under The Revolution Or Leap Over It When The Time Comes, Don't You Worry.

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

When You Are Not Feeling Particularly Friendly But Know You Ought To Be, The Best Thing You Can Do, Very Often, Is To Put On A Friendly Manner And Behave As If You Were A Nicer Person Than You Actually Are. And In A Few Minutes, As We Have All Noticed, You Will Be Really Feeling Friendlier Than You Were.

The Christian Is In A Different Position From Other People Who Are Trying To Be Good. They Hope, By Being Good, To Please God If There Is One; Or — If They Think There Is Not — At Least They Hope To Deserve Approval From Good Men. But The Christian Thinks Any Good He Does Comes From The Christ-life Inside Him. He Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us; Just As The Roof Of A Greenhouse Does Not Attract The Sun Because It Is Bright, But Becomes Bright Because The Sun Shines On It.

But Probably Every Age Gets, Within Certain Limits, The Science It Deserves.

That Part Of Rostrevor Which Overlooks Carlingford Lough Is My Idea Of Narnia.

In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.

The Way For A Person To Develop A Style Is (a) To Know Exactly What He Wants To Say, And (b) To Be Sure He Is Saying Exactly That.

Sexual Appetite, Like Any Other Appetite, Grows By Indulgence

What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

The Mouse Is A Fair Treat But This One Would Talk The Hind Legs Off A Donkey.

Most People Spend Most Of Their Lives Doing Neither What They Want To Be Doing Nor What They Ought To Be Doing.

Let's Pray That The Human Race Never Escapes From Earth To Spread Its Iniquity Elsewhere.

Why You Fool, It's The Educated Reader Who Can Be Gulled. All Our Difficulty Comes With The Others. When Did You Meet A Workman Who Believes The Papers? He Takes It For Granted That They're All Propaganda And Skips The Leading Articles....he's Our Problem. We Have To Recondition Him. But The Educated Public, The People Who Read The High-brow Weeklies, Don't Need Reconditioning. They're All Right Already. They'll Believe Anything.

The Life-force Is A Sort Of Tame God. You Can Switch It On When You Want, But It Will Not Bother You. All The Thrills Of Religion And None Of The Cost. Is The Life-force The Greatest Achievement Of Wishful Thinking The World Has Yet Seen?

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

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

Telling The Truth

Some People Feel Guilty About Their Anxieties And Regard Them As A Defect Of Faith But They Are Afflictions, Not Sins. Like All Afflictions, They Are, If We Can So Take Them, Our Share In The Passion Of Christ.

If We Are Any Good We Must Always Be Working Towards The Moment At Which Our Pupils Are Fit To Become Our Critics & Rivals

I Was The Lion Who Forced You To Join With Aravis. I Was The Cat Who Comforted You Among The Houses Of The Dead. I Was The Lion Who Drove The Jackals From You While You Slept. I Was The Lion Who Gave The Horses The New Strength Of Fear For The Last Mill So That You Should Reach King Lune In Time. And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

If One Could Run Without Getting Tired I Don't Think One Would Often Want To Do Anything Else.

Hardship Often Prepares An Ordinary Person For An Extraordinary Destiny.

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness.

The Future Is Something Which Everyone Reaches At The Rate Of 60 Minutes An Hour, Whatever He Does, Whoever He Is.

Forgive Us As We Forgive- We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse Gods Mercy For Ourselves.

The More Imagination The Reader Has ... The More He Will Do For Himself. He Will, At A Mere Hint From The Author, Flood Wretched Material With Suggestion And Never Guess That He Is Himself Chiefly Making What He Enjoys.

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.

Not To Be, But To Seem, Virtuous - It Is A Formula Whose Utility We All Discovered In The Nursery.

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

You've No Idea How Good An Old Joke Sounds When You Take It Out Again After A Rest Of Five Or Six Hundred Years.

When The Most Important Things In Our Life Happen We Quite Often Do Not Know, At The Moment, What Is Going On.

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?

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

Falling In Love Is Something That Happens To Us, Being Is Love Is Something We Do. No Passion Is Self Preservatory.

Falling In Love

'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.

Trending Author

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Alexis Arguello

Category