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Q. What Is Your View Of The Daily Discipline Of The Christian Life - The Need For Taking Time To Be Alone With God? Lewis: "we Have Our New Testament Regimental Orders Upon The Subject. I Would Take It For Granted That Everyone Who Becomes A Christian Would Undertake This Practice. It Is Enjoined Upon Us By Our Lord; And Since They Are His Commands, I Believe In Following Them. It Is Always Just Possible That Jesus Christ Meant What He Said When He Told Us To Seek The Secret Place And To Close The Door.

-C. S. Lewis

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Q. What Is Your

C. S. Lewis

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Q. What Is Your View Of The Daily Discipline Of The Christian Life - The Need For Taking Time To Be Alone With God? Lewis: "we Have Our New Testament Regimental Orders Upon The Subject. I Would Take It For Granted That Everyone Who Becomes A Christian Would Undertake This Practice. It Is Enjoined Upon Us By Our Lord; And Since They Are His Commands, I Believe In Following Them. It Is Always Just Possible That Jesus Christ Meant What He Said When He Told Us To Seek The Secret Place And To Close The Door.

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Being In Love Is A Good Thing, But It Is Not The Best Thing. There Are Many Things Below It, But There Are Also Things Above It. You Cannot Make It The Basis Of A Whole Life. It Is A Noble Feeling, But It Is Still A Feeling. Now No Feeling Can Be Relied On To Last In Its Full Intensity, Or Even To Last At All. Knowledge Can Last, Principles Can Last, Habits Can Last; But Feelings Come And Go.

Read And Re-read--"re-reading, We Always Find A New Book.

Friendship Arises Out Of Mere Companionship When Two Or More Of The Companions Discover That They Have In Common Some Insight Or Interest Or Even Taste Which The Others Do Not Share And Which, Till That Moment, Each Believed To Be His Own Unique Treasure (or Burden).

The Glory Of God, And, As Our Only Means Of Glorifying Him, The Salvation Of Human Souls, Is The Real Business Of Life.

Yes, I Know,' Interrupted Puddleglum. 'and Few Return To The Sunlit Lands. You Needn't Say It Again. You Are A Chap Of One Idea, Aren't You?

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

There Have Been Times When I Think We Do Not Desire Heaven But More Often I Find Myself Wondering Whether, In Our Heart Of Hearts, We Have Ever Desired Anything Else.

Q. What Is Your View Of The Daily Discipline Of The Christian Life - The Need For Taking Time To Be Alone With God? Lewis: "we Have Our New Testament Regimental Orders Upon The Subject. I Would Take It For Granted That Everyone Who Becomes A Christian Would Undertake This Practice. It Is Enjoined Upon Us By Our Lord; And Since They Are His Commands, I Believe In Following Them. It Is Always Just Possible That Jesus Christ Meant What He Said When He Told Us To Seek The Secret Place And To Close The Door.

I Do Not Know Why There Is This Difference, But I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait. When You Do Enter Your Room, You Will Find That The Long Wait Has Done You Some Kind Of Good Which You Would Not Have Had Otherwise. But You Must Regard It As Waiting, Not As Camping. You Must Keep On Praying For Light: And Of Course, Even In The Hall, You Must Begin Trying To Obey The Rules Which Are Common To The Whole House. And Above All You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Paneling.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

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

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

We Thought The Duke Would Have Been Pleased If The King's Majesty Would Have Married His Daughter, But Nothing Came Of That--' Squints, And Has Freckles,' Said Caspian. Oh, Poor Girl,' Said Lucy.

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.

A Dragon Has Just Flown Over The Tree-tops And Lighted On The Beach. Yes, I Am Afraid It Is Between Us And The Ship. And Arrows Are No Use Against Dragons. And They're Not At All Afraid Of Fire." "with Your Majesty's Leave-" Began Reepicheep. "no, Reepicheep," Said The King Very Firmly, "you Are Not To Attempt A Single Combat With It.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

Seek Unity And You Will Find Neither Unity Nor Truth.seek The Light Of Truth, And You Will Find Unity And Truth.

I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.

Kindness Consents Very Readily To The Removal Of Its Object – We Have All Met People Whose Kindness To Animals Is Constantly Leading Them To Kill Animals Lest They Should Suffer. Kindness, Merely As Such, Cares Not Whether Its Object Becomes Good Or Bad, Provided Only That It Escapes Suffering.

Please Will You Do My Job For Me.

Each New Power Won By Man Is A Power Over Man As Well. Each Advance Leaves Him Weaker As Well As Stronger.

Thought Provoking

Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.

They Were Really Getting Quite Fond Of Their Strange Pet And Hoped That Aslan Would Allow Them To Keep It. The Cleverer Ones Were Quite Sure By Now That At Least Some Of The Noises Which Came Out Of His Mouth Had A Meaning. They Christened Him Brandy Because He Made That Noise So Often.

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.

The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

Humility Is Self-forgetfulness.

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?

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog.

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

Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Consciences, But Shouts In Our Pains. It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

When Golden Moments Come, When God Enables One Really To Pray Without Words, Who But A Fool Would Reject The Gift?

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

In Our Adversity, God Shouts To Us.

Reasoning Is Never, Like Poetry, Judged From The Outside At All.

There Is No Doctrine Which I Would More Willingly Remove From Christianity Than The Doctrine Of Hell, If It Lay In My Power. But It Has The Support Of Scripture And, Especially, Of Our Lord's Own Words; It Has Always Been Held By The Christian Church, And It Has The Support Of Reason.

Nothing Is Yet In Its True Form.

The Very Power Of [textbook Writers] Depends On The Fact That They Are Dealing With A Boy: A Boy Who Thinks He Is ‘doing’ His ‘english Prep’ And Has No Notion That Ethics, Theology, And Politics Are All At Stake. It Is Not A Theory They Put Into His Mind, But An Assumption, Which Ten Years Hence, Its Origin Forgotten And Its Presence Unconscious, Will Condition Him To Take One Side In A Controversy Which He Has Never Recognized As A Controversy At All.

It Takes Courage To Live Through Suffering; And It Takes Honesty To Observe It.

The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.

The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.

Our Problem With Desire Is That We Want Too Little.

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

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

I Dread Specialists In Power Because They Are Specialists Speaking Outside Of Their Special Subject.

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

Don't Say It Was "delightful"; Make Us Say "delightful" When We've Read The Description.

Jesus Christ Did Not Say, 'go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right.'

Do Not Cite The Deep Magic To Me, Witch. I Was There When It Was Written.

For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

I Am A Product Of Long Corridors, Empty Sunlit Rooms, Upstairs Indoor Silences, Attics Explored In Solitude, Distant Noises Of Gurgling Cisterns And Pipes, And The Noise Of Wind Under The Tiles. Also, Of Endless Books.

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.

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.

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

And Yet All Loneliness, Angers, Hatreds, Envies, And Itchings That It Contains, If Rolled Into One Single Experience And Put Into The Scale Against The Least Moment Of The Joy That Is Felt By The Least In Heaven, Would Have No Weight That Could Be Registered At All. Bad Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad As Truly As Good Is Good.

Christ Offers Something For Nothing: He Even Offers Everything For Nothing.

Our Souls Demand Purgatory, Don't They? Would It Not Break The Heart If God Said To Us, It Is True, My Son, That Your Breath Smells And Your Rags Drip With Mud And Slime, But We Are Charitable Here And No One Will Upbraid You With These Things, Nor Draw Away From You. Enter Into Joy? Should We Not Reply, With Submission, Sir, And If There Is No Objection, I'd Rather Be Cleansed First. It May Hurt, You Know-even So, Sir.

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.

But As For Lucy, She Was Always Gay And Golden-haired, And All Princes In Those Parts Desired Her To Be Their Queen, And Her Own People Called Her Queen Lucy The Valiant.

Part Of Every Misery Is, So To Speak, The Misery's Shadow Or Reflection: The Fact That You Don't Merely Suffer But Have To Keep On Thinking About The Fact That You Suffer. I Not Only Live Each Endless Day In Grief, But Live Each Day Thinking About Living Each Day In Grief.

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.

Progress Means Movement In A Desired Direction, And We Do Not All Desire The Same Things For Our Species.

No Mind Is So Good That It Does Not Need Another Mind To Counter And Equal It, And To Save It From Conceit And Bigotry And Folly

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

When The Opposite Of Your Prayer Occurs, Your Prayer Hasn't Been Ignored; It's Been Considered & Refused For Your Ultimate Good.

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.

We Have Not, In Fact, Proved That Science Excludes Miracles: We Have Only Proved That The Question Of Miracles, Like Innumerable Other Questions, Excludes Laboratory Treatment.

An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.

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

You Know What This Is, I Suppose. Religious Melancholia. Stop While There Is Time. If You Dive, You Dive Into Insanity.

And Out Of That Hopeless Attempt Has Come Nearly All That We Call Human History—money, Poverty, Ambition, War, Prostitution, Classes, Empires, Slavery—the Long Terrible Story Of Man Trying To Find Something Other Than God Which Will Make Him Happy.

I Felt In My Bones That This Universe Does Not Explain Itself.

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

Grief. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

Losing Everything

I Write For The Unlearned About Things In Which I Am Unlearned Myself.

The Sight Of The Huge World Put Mad Ideas Into Me, As If I Could Wander Away, Wander Forever, See Strange And Beautiful Things, One After The Other...

No Natural Feelings Are High Or Low, Holy Or Unholy, In Themselves. They Are All Holy When God's Hand Is On The Rein. They All Go Bad When They Set Up On Their Own And Make Themselves Into False Gods.

All That Are In Hell, Choose It. Without That Self-choice There Could Be No Hell.

Death And Resurrection Are What The Story Is About And Had We But Eyes To See It, This Has Been Hinted On Every Page, Met Us, In Some Disguise, At Every Turn, And Even Been Muttered In Conversations Between Such Minor Characters (if They Are Minor Characters) As The Vegetables.

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".

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.

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

Term, Holidays, Term, Holidays, Till We Leave School, And Then Work, Work, Work Till We Die.

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'.

Christianity Has Not Message For Those Who Do Not Realize They Are Sinners.

I Don't Want To Hold You Hand!

When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place [if We Anticipate And Look For It, Rather Than Wallow In Our 'supposed Loss'. It Can Be Helpful To Think Of The Loss Of That Blessing As Simply Necessary To Make Way For Another Different Blessing].

Men Became Scientific Because They Expected Law In Nature, And They Expected Law In Nature Because They Believed In A Law Giver.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

I Have Been Trying To Make The Reader Believe That We Actually Are, At Present, Creatures Whose Character Must Be, In Some Respects, A Horror To God, As It Is, When We Really See It, A Horror To Ourselves. This I Believe To Be A Fact: And I Notice That The Holier A Man Is, The More Fully He Is Aware Of That Fact.

100 Per Cent Of Us Die, And The Percentage Cannot Be Increased.

We Don't Have A Soul. We Are A Soul. We Happen To Have A Body.

The Terrible Thing, The Almost Impossible Thing, Is The Hand Over Your Whole Self--all Your Wishes And Precautions--to Christ.

Impossible Things

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?

We Do Not Want To Merely “see” Beauty. We Want To Be United With It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Become Part Of It.

Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.

I Think He Made One Law Of That Kind In Order That There Might Be Obedience. In All These Other Matters What You Call Obeying Him Is But Doing What Seems Good In Your Own Eyes Also. Is Love Content With That?

Now Is Our Chance To Choose The Right Side. God Is Holding Back To Give Us That Chance. It Won't Last Forever. We Must Take It Or Leave It.

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.

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.

Things Always Work According To Their Nature.

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.

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

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.

The Sane Would Do No Good If They Made Themselves Mad To Help Madmen.

We Only Learn To Behave Ourselves In The Presence Of God.

Presence Of God

Language Exists To Communicate Whatever It Can Communicate. Some Things It Communicates So Badly That We Never Attempt To Communicate Them By Words If Any Other Medium Is Available.

Extraordinary Things Only Happen To Extraordinary People. Maybe It's A Sign That You've Got An Extraordinary Destiny--something Greater Than You Could've Imagined.

Extraordinary Things

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.

To See, In Some Measure, Like God. His Love And His Knowledge Are Not Distinct From One Another, Not From Him. We Could Almost Say He Sees Because He Loves, And Therefore Loves Although He Sees.

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.

It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.

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

You Had Nothing To Say About It And Yet Made The Nothing Up Into Words.

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.

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.

At Present We Are On The Outside Of The World, The Wrong Side Of The Door. We Discern The Freshness And Purity Of Morning, But They Do Not Make Us Fresh And Pure. We Cannot Mingle With The Splendours We See. But All The Leaves Of The New Testament Are Rustling With The Rumour That It Will Not Always Be So. Some Day, God Willing, We Shall Get In.

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

The Eternal Being, Who Knows Everything And Who Created The Whole Universe, Became Not Only A Man But (before That) A Baby, And Before That A Fetus In A Woman's Body.

There Are Far, Far Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

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.

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.

Wherever Any Precept Of Traditional Morality Is Simply Challenged To Produce Its Credentials, As Though The Burden Of Proof Lay On It, We Have Taken The Wrong Position.

Burden Of Proof

I Have Seen Something Like It Happen In Battle. A Man Was Coming At Me, I At Him, To Kill. Then Came A Sudden Great Gust Of Wind That Wrapped Out Cloaks Over Our Swords And Almost Over Our Eyes, So That We Could Do Nothing To One Another But Must Fight The Wind Itself. And That Ridiculous Contention, So Foreign To The Business We Were On, Set Us Both Laughing, Face To Face - Friends For A Moment - And Then At Once Enemies Again And Forever.

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

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness.

Many Thousands Of People Have Had The Experience Of Finding The First Friend, And It Is None The Less A Wonder; As Great A Wonder (pace The Novelists) As First Love, Or Even Greater.

...if All We Mean By Our Love Is A Craving To Be Loved, We Are In A Very Deplorable State.

As Long As This Deliberate Refusal To Understand Things From Above, Even Where Such Understanding Is Possible, Continues, It Is Idle To Talk Of Any Final Victory Over Materialism.

Whatever He Says, Let His Inner Resolution Be Not To Bear Whatever Comes To Him, But To Bear It 'for A Reasonable Period'--and Let The Reasonable Period Be Shorter Than The Trial Is Likely To Last. It Need Not Be Much Shorter; In Attacks On Patience, Chastity, And Fortitude, The Fun Is To Make The Man Yield Just When (had He But Known It) Relief Was Almost In Sight.

Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.

People Shouldn't Call For Demons Unless They Really Mean What They Say.

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 Wish We Didn't Live In A World Where Buying And Selling Things Seems To Have Become Almost More Important Than Either Producing Or Using Them.

God's Love Is Not Wearied By Our Sins & Is Relentless In Its Determination That We Be Cured At Whatever Cost To Us Or Him

We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.

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.

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.

The Good Man's Past Begins To Change So That His Forgiven Sins And Remembered Sorrows Take On The Quality Of Heaven.

A Great Many People (not You) Do Now Seem To Think That The Mere State Of Being Worried Is In Itself Meritorious. I Don’t Think It Is. We Must, If It So Happens, Give Our Lives For Others: But Even While We’re Doing It, I Think We’re Meant To Enjoy Our Lord And, In Him, Our Friends, Our Food, Our Sleep, Our Jokes, And The Birds’ Song And The Frosty Sunrise.

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.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

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.

God Has Infinite Attention To Spare For Each One Of Us.

The Natural Life In Each Of Us Is Something Self-centred, Something That Wants To Be Petted And Admired, To Take Advantage Of Other Lives, To Exploit The Whole Universe.

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

When Once A Man Is Launched On Such An Adventure As This, He Must Bid Farewell To Hopes And Fears, Otherwise Death Or Deliverance Will Both Come Too Late To Save His Honor And His Reason. Ho, My Beauties!

In Coming To Understand Anything We Are Rejecting The Facts As They Are For Us In Favour Of The Facts As They Are.

When The Police Arrived And Found No Lion, No Broken Wall, And No Convicts, And The Head Behaving Like A Lunatic, There Was An Inquiry Into The Whole Thing. And In The Inquiry All Sorts Of Things About Experiment House Came Out, And About Ten People Got Expelled. After That, The Head's Friends Saw That The Head Was No Use As A Head, So They Got Her Made An Inspector To Interfere With Other Heads. And When They Found She Wasn't Much Good Even At That, They Got Her Into Parliament Where She Lived Happily Ever After.

God Is Not An Optional Extra, He's An Absolute Must!

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

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not. We Cannot Compete, In Simplicity With People Who Are Inventing Religions. How Could We? We Are Dealing With Fact. Of Course Anyone Can Be Simple If He Has No Facts To Bother About.

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

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

What Began The Change Was The Very Writing Itself. Let No One Lightly Set About Such A Work. Memory, Once Waked, Will Play The Tyrant.

But What Manner Of Use Would It Be Ploughing Through That Darkness?' Asked Drinian. Use?' Replied Reepicheep. 'use, Captain?' If You Mean By Filling Our Bellies Or Our Purses, I Confess It Will Be No Use At All. So Far As I Know We Did Not Set Sail To Look For Things Useful But To Seek Honour And Adventures. And Here Is As Great An Adventure As I Have Ever Heard Of, And Here, If We Turn Back, No Little Impeachment Of All Our Honours.

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.

I Don't Want Him To Live Forever, And I Know That He's Not Going To Live Forever Whether I Want Him To Or Not.

What Assurance Have We That Our Masters Will Or Can Keep The Promise Which Induced Us To Sell Ourselves? Let Us Not Be Deceived By Phrases About 'man Taking Charge Of His Own Destiny'. All That Can Really Happen Is That Some Men Will Take Charge Of The Destiny Of The Others. They Will Be Simply Men; None Perfect; Some Greedy, Cruel And Dishonest. The More Completely We Are Planned The More Powerful They Will Be. Have We Discovered Some New Reason Why, This Time, Power Should Not Corrupt As It Has Done Before?

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.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

The Problem Of Reconciling Human Suffering With The Existence Of A God Who Loves, Is Only Insoluble So Long As We Attach A Trivial Meaning To The Word "love", And Look On Things As If Man Were The Centre Of Them. Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake. "thou Hast Created All Things, And For Thy Pleasure They Are And Were Created." We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God (though We Were Made For That Too) But That God May Love Us, That We May Become Objects In Which The Divine Love May Rest "well Pleased".

Everyone Who Believes In God At All Believes That He Knows What You And I Are Going To Do Tomorrow.

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

When The Voice Of Your Friend Or The Page Of Your Book Sinks Into Democratic Equality With The Pattern Of The Wallpaper, The Feel Of Your Clothes, Your Memory Of Last Night, And The Noises From The Road, You Are Falling Asleep. The Highly Selective Consciousness Enjoyed By Fully Alert Men, With All Its Builded Sentiments And Consecrated Ideals, Has As Much To Be Called Real As The Drowsy Chaos, And More.

A Society In Which Conjugal Infidelity Is Tolerated Must Always Be In The Long Run A Society Adverse To Women.

A Tyrannous And Gluttonous Demand For Affection Can Be A Horrible Thing. But In Ordinary Life No One Calls A Child Selfish Because It Turns For Comfort To Its Mother; Nor An Adult Who Turns To His Fellow "for Company." Those, Whether Children Or Adults, Who Do So Least Are Not Usually The Most Selfless.

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

I Find That When I Think I Am Asking God To Forgive Me I Am Often In Reality. . . Asking Him Not To Forgive Me But To Excuse Me.

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

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

God Has Infinite Attention, Infinite Leisure To Spare For Each One Of Us. He Doesn't Have To Take Us In The Line. You're As Much Alone With Him As If You Were The Only Thing He'd Ever Created.

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

Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

The Christians Say That God Has Done Miracles. The Modern World, Even When It Believes In God, And Even When It Has See The Defenselessness Of Nature, Does Not. It Thinks God Would Not Do That Sort Of Thing.

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.

The Christian And The Materialist Hold Different Beliefs About The Universe. They Can't Both Be Right. The One Who Is Wrong Will Act In A Way Which Simply Doesn't Fit The Real Universe. Consequently, With The Best Will In The World, He Will Be Helping His Fellow Creatures To Their Destruction.

Pain Is G-d's Megaphone To Wake Up The World.

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.

It Is A Serious Thing To Live In A Society Of Possible Gods And Goddesses. To Remember That The Dullest, And Most Uninteresting Person You Can Talk To May One Day Be A Creature Which, If You Saw It Now, You Would Be Strongly Tempted To Worship.

You Can't Analyze God. He Is Too Awesome, Too Big, Too Mysterious.

Growing Maturity Is Marked By The Increasing Liberties We Take With Our Travelling... We Made The Discovery (some People Never Make It) That Real Books Can Be Taken On A Journey And That Hours Of Golden Reading Can So Be Added To Its Other Delights.

Only He Who Really Lived A Human Life (and I Presume That Only One Did) Can Fully Taste The Horror Of Death.

When You Go To Church You Are Really Listening-in To The Secret Wireless From Out Friends: That Is Why The Enemy Is So Anxious To Prevent Us From Going. He Does It By Playing On Our Conceit And Laziness And Intellectual Snobbery.

I Think Earth, If Chosen Instead Of Heaven, Will Turn Out To Have Been, All Along, Only A Region In Hell; And Earth, If Put Second To Heaven, To Have Been From The Beginning A Part Of Heaven Itself.

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

We Have Made Men Proud Of Most Vices, But Not Of Cowardice. Whenever We Have Almost Succeeded In Doing So, God Permits A War Or An Earthquake Or Some Other Calamity, And At Once Courage Becomes So Obviously Lovely And Important Even In Human Eyes That All Our Work Is Undone, And There Is Still At Least One Vice Of Which They Feel Genuine Shame. The Danger Of Inducing Cowardice In Our Patients, Therefore, Is Lest We Produce Real Self-knowledge And Self-loathing, With Consequent Repentance And Humility.

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

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.

You Find Out The Strength Of A Wind By Trying To Walk Against It, Not By Lying Down.

In Silence And In Meditation On The Eternal Truths, I Hear The Voice Of God Which Excites Our Hearts To Greater Love.

We Must Sometimes Get Away From The Authorized Version, If For No Other Reason, Simply Because It Is So Beautiful And So Solemn. Beauty Exalts, But Beauty Also Lulls. Early Associations Endear, But They Also Confuse. Through That Beautiful Solemnity, The Transporting Or Horrifying Realities Of Which The Book Tells May Come To Us Blunted And Disarmed, And We May Only Sigh With Tranquil Veneration When We Ought To Be Burning With Shame, Or Struck Dumb With Terror, Or Carried Out Of Ourselves By Ravishing Hopes And Adorations.

I Thought I Could Describe A State; Make A Map Of Sorrow. Sorrow, Hoever, Turns Out To Be Not A State But A Process.

When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.

As Long As You Notice, And Have To Count The Steps, You Are Not Yet Dancing But Only Learning To Dance. A Good Shoe Is A Shoe You Don't Notice. Good Reading Becomes Possible When You Need Not Conciously Think About Eyes, Or Light, Or Print, Or Spelling. The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God.

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George A. Sheehan

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