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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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She Looked At A

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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In Each Of My Friends There Is Something That Only Some Other Friend Can Fully Bring Out. By Myself I Am Not Large Enough To Call The Whole Man Into Activity; I Want Other Lights Than My Own To Show All His Facets... Hence True Friendship Is The Least Jealous Of Loves. Two Friends Delight To Be Joined By A Third, And Three By A Fourth, If Only The Newcomer Is Qualified To Become A Real Friend. They Can Then Say, As The Blessed Souls Say In Dante, "here Comes One Who Will Augment Our Loves." For In This Love "to Divide Is Not To Take Away.

The First Thing To Get Clear About Christian Morality Between Man And Man Is That In This Department Christ Did Not Come To Teach Any Brand New Morality. The Golden Rule Of The New Testament (do As You Would Be Done By) Is A Summing Up Of What Everyone, At Bottom, Had Always Known To Be Right.

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

There Is No Neutral Ground In The Universe. Every Square Inch, Every Split Second Is Claimed By God, And Counterclaimed By Satan.

The Scotch Catechism Says That Man's Chief End Is 'to Glorify God And Enjoy Him Forever.' But We Shall Then Know That These Are The Same Thing. Fully To Enjoy Is To Glorify. In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

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.

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.

Man Was Appointed By God To Have Dominion Over The Beasts, And Everything A Man Does To An Animal Is Either A Lawful Exercise Or A Sacrilegious Abuse Of An Authority By Divine Right.

The Fundamental Laws Are In The Long Run Merely Statements That Every Event Is Itself And Not Some Different Event.

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.

It Is In Some Ways More Troublesome To Track And Swat An Evasive Wasp Than To Shoot, At Close Range, A Wild Elephant. But The Elephant Is More Troublesome If You Miss.

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

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.

It Is That Of An Unsatisfied Desire Which Is Itself More Desirable Than Any Other Satisfaction.

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

Most Of Us Are Not Really Approaching The Subject In Order To Find Out What Christianity Says; We Are Approaching It In The Hope Of Finding Support From Christianity For The Views Of Our Own Party.

I Haven't Any Language Weak Enough To Depict The Weakness Of My Spiritual Life. If I Weakened It Enough It Would Cease To Be Language At All. As When You Try To Turn The Gas-ring A Little Lower Still, And It Merely Goes Out.

We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely

I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)

And That's Why, When They Want To Get Rid Of Anyone, They Usually Bring Him Down Here (like They Were Doing With Me) And Say They'll Leave Him To The Ghosts. But I Always Wondered If They Didn't Really Drown 'em Or Cut Their Throats. I Never Quite Believed In The Ghosts. But Those Two Cowards You've Just Shot Believed All Right. They Were More Scared Of Taking Me To My Death Than I Was Of Going.

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.

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

One Of Our Great Allies At Present Is The Church Itself. Do Not Misunderstand Me. I Do Not Mean The Church As We See Her Spread Out Through All Time And Space And Rooted In Eternity, Terrible As An Army With Banners. That, I Confess, Is A Spectacle Which Makes Our Boldest Tempters Uneasy. But Fortunately It Is Quite Invisible To These Humans.

Without Sin, The Universe Is A Solemn Game: And There Is No Good Game Without Rules.

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

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.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear.

On The Back Of Satan's Neck Is A Nail Scarred Footprint.

For The Church Is Not A Human Society Of People United By Their Natural Affinities But The Body Of Christ, In Which All Members, However Different, (and He Rejoices In Their Differences And By No Means Wishes To Iron Them Out) Must Share The Common Life, Complementing And Helping One Another Precisely By Their Differences.

The State Exists Simply To Promote And To Protect The Ordinary Happiness Of Human Beings In This Life. A Husband And Wife Chatting Over A Fire, A Couple Of Friends Having A Game Of Darts In A Pub, A Man Reading A Book In His Own Room Or Digging In His Own Garden-that Is What The State Is There For. And Unless They Are Helping To Increase And Prolong And Protect Such Moments, All The Laws, Parliaments, Armies, Courts, Police, Economics, Etc., Are Simply A Waste Of Time.

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

It Doesn't Really Matter Whether You Grip The Arms Of The Dentist's Chair Or Let Your Hands Lie In Your Lap. The Drill Drills On.

That Raises A Terrible Question. How Is It That People Who Are Quite Obviously Eaten Up With Pride Can Say They Believe In God And Appear To Themselves Very Religious? I Am Afraid It Means They Are Worshiping An Imaginary God.

I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.

Screwtape Letters

A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.

Alas," Said Aslan, Shaking His Head. "it Will. Things Always Work According To Their Nature. She Has Won Her Heart's Desire; She Has Unwearying Strength And Endless Days Like A Goddess. But Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery And Already She Begins To Know It. All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

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".

Man Is To Be Understood Only In His Relationship To God.

Theocracy Is The Worst Of All Governments. If We Must Have A Tyrant, A Robber Baron Is Far Better Than An Inquisitor. The Baron's Cruelty May Sometimes Sleep, His Cupidity At Some Point Be Sated; And Since He Dimly Knows He Is Doing Wrong He May Possibly Repent. But The Inquisitor Who Mistakes His Own Cruelty And Lust Of Power And Fear For The Voice Of Heaven Will Torment Us Infinitely Because He Torments Us With The Approval Of His Own Conscience And His Better Impulses Appear To Him As Temptations.

All Hell Is Smaller Than One Pebble Of Your Earthly World; But It Is Smaller Than One Atom Of This World, The Real World.

You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

God Is Not A Static Thing...but A Dynamic, Pulsating Activity, A Life, Almost A Kind Of Drama. Almost, If You Will Not Think Me Irreverent, A Kind Of Dance.

Did I Hate Him, Then? Indeed, I Believe So. A Love Like That Can Grow To Be Nine-tenths Hatred And Still Call Itself Love.

The Greatest Evil Is Not Done In Those Sordid Dens Of Evil That Dickens Loved To Paint ... But Is Conceived And Ordered (moved, Seconded, Carried, And Minuted) In Clear, Carpeted, Warmed, Well-lighted Offices, By Quiet Men With White Collars And Cut Fingernails And Smooth-shaven Cheeks Who Do Not Need To Raise Their Voices.

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.

In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

One Of The Things That Distinguishes Man From The Other Animals Is That He Wants To Know Things, Wants To Find Out What Reality Is Like, Simply For The Sake Of Knowing. When That Desire Is Completely Quenched In Anyone, I Think He Has Become Something Less Than Human.

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.

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

When You Invite A Middle-aged Moralist To Address You, I Suppose I Must Conclude That You Have A Taste For Middle-aged Moralizing.

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

Christian Inspirational

Any Patch Of Sunlight In A Wood Will Show You Something About The Sun Which You Could Never Get From Reading Books On Astronomy. These Pure And Spontaneous Pleasures Are ‘patches Of Godlight’ In The Woods Of Our Experience.

A Man Is Never So Proud As When Striking An Attitude Of Humility.

Precisely Because We Cannot Predict The Moment, We Must Be Ready At All Moments.

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.

The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.

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

We Have Discovered That The Scheme Of 'outlawing War' Has Made War More Like An Outlaw Without Making It Less Frequent And That To Banish The Knight Does Not Alleviate The Suffering Of The Peasant.

If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be; If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All

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

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

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

You Can't Get A Cup Of Tea Large Enough Or A Book Long Enough To Suit Me.

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

It Would Be Nice And Fairly Nearly True, To Say That 'from That Time Forth, Eustace Was A Different Boy.' To Be Strictly Accurate, He Began To Be A Different Boy. He Had Relapses. There Were Still Many Days When He Could Be Very Tiresome. But Most Of Those I Shall Not Notice. The Cure Had Begun.

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.

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.

Laziness Means More Work In The Long Run.

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

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

In Those Days A Boy On The Classical Side Officially Did Almost Nothing But Classics. I Think This Was Wise; The Greatest Service We Can To Education Today Is To Teach Few Subjects. No One Has Time To Do More Than A Very Few Things Well Before He Is Twenty, And When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

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

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

It Means That Though The Witch Knew The Deep Magic, There Is A Magic Deeper Still That She Did Not Know. Her Knowledge Goes Back Only To The Dawn Of Time. But If She Could Have Looked A Little Further Back, Into The Stillness And Darkness Before Time Began, She Would Have Read There A Different Incantation. She Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor's Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Work Backwards.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.... Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses. If He Is Your Christian Neighbor He Is Holy In Almost The Same Way, For In Him Also Christ Verse Latitat - The Glorifier And The Glorified, Glory Himself, Is Truly Hidden.

Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.

Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.

For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare.

We May Be Sure That The Characteristic Blindness Of The Twentieth Century [...] Lies Where We Have Never Suspected It [...] The Only Palliative Is [...] By Reading Old Books. [...] The Books Of The Future Would Be Just As Good [...], But Unfortunately We Cannot Get At Them.

The More Often He Feels Without Acting, The Less He Will Be Able Ever To Act, And, In The Long Run, The Less He Will Be Able To Feel.

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.

But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.

The People With Very Hard Problems Are Understood By God. He Knows What Wretched Machines They Are Trying To Drive. Some Day He Will Fling Them Away And Give Those People New Ones; Then They May Astonish Everyone, For They Learned Their Driving In A Hard School. Some Of The Last Will Be First And Some Of The First Will Be Last.

I Have Been Suspected Of Being What Is Called A Fundamentalist. That Is Because I Never Regard Any Narrative As Unhistorical Simply On The Ground That It Includes The Miraculous.

All Possible Knowledge, Then, Depends On The Validity Of Reasoning...unless Human Reasoning Is Valid No Science Can Be True.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact. The Old Myth Of The Dying God, Without Ceasing To Be A Myth, Comes Down From The Heaven Of Legend And Imagination To The Earth Of History.

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

You Are Certainly Under The Guidance Of The Holy Ghost Or You Wouldn't Have Come Where You Now Are.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable.

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

Perhaps Civilization Will Never Be Safe Until We Care For Something Else More Than We Care For It. The Hypothesis Has Certain Facts To Support It. As Far As Peace (which Is One Ingredient In Our Idea Of Civilization)is Concerned, I Think Many Would Now Agree That A Foreign Policy Dominated By Desire For Peace Is One Of The Many Roads That Lead To War.

The Terrible Thing, The Almost Impossible Thing, Is To Hand Over Your Whole Self--all Your Wishes And Precautions--to Christ. But It Is Far Easier Than What We Are All Trying To Do Instead. For What We Are Trying To Do Is To Remain What We Call "ourselves," To Keep Personal Happiness As Our Great Aim In Life, And Yet At The Same Time Be "good.

Impossible Things

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

We Must Perpetually Try To Distinguish, However Closely They Get Entwined By The Subtle Nature Of The Facts And By The Secret Importunity Of Our Passions, Those Attitudes In A Writer Which We Can Honestly And Confidently Condemn As Real Evils, And Those Qualities In His Writing Which Simply Annoy And Offend Us As Men Of Taste.

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.

What Do People Mean When They Say, 'i Am Not Afraid Of God Because I Know He Is Good'? Have They Never Even Been To A Dentist?

I Need Christ, Not Something That Resembles Him.

For In Calormen, Story-telling (whether The Stories Are True Or Made Up) Is A Thing You're Taught, Just As English Boys And Girls Are Taught Essay-writing. The Difference Is That People Want To Hear The Stories, Whereas I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Wanted To Read The Essays.

In Great Literature, I Become A Thousand Different Men But Still Remain Myself.

Man's Conquest Of Nature Turns Out, In The Moment Of Its Consummation, To Be Nature's Conquest Of Man.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

Every Uncorrected Error And Unrepented Sin Is, In Its Own Right, A Fountain Of Fresh Error And Fresh Sin Flowing On To The End Of Time.

Prayer In The Sense Of Petition, Asking For Things, Is A Small Part Of It; Confession And Penitence Are Its Threshold, Adoration Its Sanctuary, The Presence And Vision And Enjoyment Of God Its Bread And Wine.

The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.

I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.

Death Opens A Door Out Of A Little, Dark Room (that's All The Life We Have Known Before It) Into A Great, Real Place Where The True Sun Shines And We Shall Meet.

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.

When I'm Older I'll Understand" Said Lucy, " I Am Older And I Don't Think I Want To Understand", Replied Edmund

It Is Natural For Us To Wish That God Had Designed For Us A Less Glorious And Less Arduous Destiny; But Then We Are Wishing Not For More Love But For Less.

We Reduce Things To Mere Nature In Order That We May "conquer" Them.

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.

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

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 Things Are Real, They're There All The Time.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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.

Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.

Ideally, We Should Like To Define A Good Book As One Which 'permits, Invites, Or Compels' Good Reading

Into The Void Of Silence, Into The Empty Space Of Nothing, The Joy Of Life Is Unfurled.

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.

It Now Seemed To Me That All My Other Guesses Had Been Only Self-pleasing Dreams Spun Out Of My Wishes, But Now I Was Awake.

Reality The Iconoclast Once More. Heaven Will Solve Our Problems, But Not, I Think, By Showing Us Subtle Reconciliations Between All Our Apparently Contradictory Notions. The Notions Will All Be Knocked From Under Our Feet. We Shall See That There Never Was Any Problem.

Scripture Itself Is Not Systematic; The New Testament Shows The Greatest Variety. God Has Shown Us That He Can Use Any Instrument. Balaam's Ass, You Remember, Preached A Very Effective Sermon In The Midst Of His 'hee-haws.'

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

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

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.

If You Examined A Hundred People Who Had Lost Their Faith In Christianity, I Wonder How Many Of Them Would Turn Out To Have Reasoned Out Of It By Honest Argument? Do Not Most People Simply Drift Away?

He Died Not For Men, But For Each Man. If Each Man Had Been The Only Man Made, He Would Have Done No Less.

We 'have All We Want' Is A Terrible Saying When 'all' Does Not Include God. We Find God An Interruption. As St. Augustine Says Somewhere, 'god Wants To Give Us Something, But Cannot, Because Our Hands Are Full - There's Nowhere For Him To Put It.'

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.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear. I Am Not Afraid, But The Sensation Is Like Being Afraid. The Same Fluttering In The Stomach, The Same Restlessness, The Yawning. I Keep On Swallowing.

What He Says, Even On His Knees, About His Own Sinfulness Is All Parrot Talk. At Bottom, He Still Believes He Has Run Up A Very Favorable Credit-balance In The Enemy's Ledger By Allowing Himself To Be Converted, And Thinks That He Is Showing Great Humility And Condescension In Going To Church With These 'smug', Commonplace Neighbors At All.

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

If You Think Of This World As A Place Intended Simply For Our Happiness, You Find It Quite Intolerable: Think Of It As A Place Of Training And Correction And It's Not So Bad.

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

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?

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven. Our Merriment Must Be Between People Who Take Each Other Seriously.

God Can Show Himself As He Really Is Only To Real Men. And That Means Not Simply To Men Who Are Individually Good, But To Men Who Are United Together In A Body, Loving One Another, Helping One Another, Showing Him To One Another. For That Is What God Meant Humanity To Be Like; Like Players In One Band, Or Organs In One Body.

Her Face Was Working And Twitching With Passion, But His Looked Up At The Sky, Still Quiet, Neither Angry Nor Afraid, But A Little Sad.

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

If Christianity Is Only One More Bit Of Good Advice, Then Christianity Is Of No Importance.

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

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

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.

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.

Some Day You Will Be Old Enough To Start Reading Fairy Tales Again.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

Most People Don't Need To Be Taught, They Need Only To Be Reminded

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

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.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Wouldn't Be A Great Moral Teacher. He'd Be Either A Lunatic On A Level With A Man Who Says He's A Poached Egg Or Else He'd Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse.

Those Who Would Most Scornfully Repudiate Christianity As A Mere "opiate Of The People" Have A Contempt For The Rich, That Is, For All Mankind Except The Poor.

He'll Be Coming And Going" He Had Said. "one Day You'll See Him And Another You Won't. He Doesn't Like Being Tied Down--and Of Course He Has Other Countries To Attend To. It's Quite All Right. He'll Often Drop In. Only You Mustn't Press Him. He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.

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

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen Of Narnia.

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

Losing Everything

What Can You Ever Really Know Of Other People's Souls — Of Their Temptations, Their Opportunities, Their Struggles? One Soul In The Whole Of Creation You Do Know: And It Is The Only One Whose Fate Is Placed In Your Hands. If There Is A God, You Are, In A Sense, Alone With Him.

Education Is Only The Most Fully Conscious Of The Channels Whereby Each Generation Influences The Next.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

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

Here The Whole World (stars, Water, Air, And Field, And Forest, As They Were Reflected In A Single Mind) Like Cast Off Clothes Was Left Behind In Ashes, Yet With Hopes That She, Re-born From Holy Poverty, In Lenten Lands, Hereafter May Resume Them On Her Easter Day." (epitaph For Joy Gresham)

The Best Fruits Are Plucked For Each By Some Hand That Is Not His Own.

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.

Narnia! It's All In The Wardrobe Just Like I Told You!

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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.

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.

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

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

Nothing Can Seem Extraordinary Until You Have Discovered What Is Ordinary.

A Promise Must Be About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling A Certain Way.

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are Only The Picture. You Can't See It. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted---i.e., Keep Fulfilling All The Obvious Duties Of Your Station (you Really Know Quite Well Enough What They Are!), Asking Forgiveness For Each Failure And Then Leaving It Alone.you Are In The Right Way. Walk---don't Keep On Looking At It.

You Have No Idea What An Appetite It Gives One, Being Executed.

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

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

Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.

To Excuse What Can Really Produce Good Excuses Is Not Christian Charity; It Is Only Fairness. To Be A Christian Means To Forgive The Inexcusable In You.

The Higher Animals Are In A Sense Drawn Into Man When He Loves Them And Makes Them (as He Does) Much More Nearly Human Than They Would Otherwise Be.

Safe?” Said Mr. Beaver; “don’t You Hear What Mrs. Beaver Tells You? Who Said Anything About Safe? ‘course He Isn’t Safe. But He’s Good. He’s The King, I Tell You.

I'm Not Sure God Wants Us To Be Happy. I Think He Wants Us To Love, And Be Loved. But We Are Like Children, Thinking Our Toys Will Make Us Happy And The Whole World Is Our Nursery. Something Must Drive Us Out Of That Nursery And Into The Lives Of Others, And That Something Is Suffering.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World.

Screwtape Letters

If God Is Satisfied With The Work, The Work May Be Satisfied With Itself.

A Myth Is A Lie That Conveys A Truth.

You Can't Lay Down Any Pattern For God. There Are Many Different Ways Of Bringing People Into His Kingdom, Even Some Ways That I Specially Dislike! I Have Therefore Learned To Be Cautious In My Judgment.

The Enemy Wants To Bring The Man To A State Of Mind In Which He Could Design The Best Cathedral In The World, And Know It To Be The Best, And Rejoice In The Fact, Without Being Any More (or Less) Or Otherwise Glad At Having Done It Than He Would Be If It Had Been Done By Another. The Enemy Wants Him, In The End, To Be So Free From Any Bias In His Own Favour That He Can Rejoice In His Own Talents As Frankly And Gratefully As In His Neighbour's Talents--or In A Sunrise, An Elephant, Or A Waterfall.

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.

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.

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

Giving To The Poor Is An Essential Part Of Christian Morality.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off His Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is.

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. His Increasing Reputation, His Widening Circle Of Acquaintances, His Sense Of Importance, The Growing Pressure Of Absorbing And Agreeable Work Build Up In Him A Sense Of Being Really At Home On Earth Which Is Just What We Want.

Provided That Any Of Those Neighbours Sing Out Of Tune Or Have Boots That Squeak, Or Double Chins, Or Odd Clothes, The Patient Will Quite Easily Believe That Their Religion Must Therefore Be Somehow Ridiculous.

Every Joy Is Beyond All Others.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And... God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again

That's The Worst Of Girls," Said Edmund To Peter And The Dwarf. "they Never Can Carry A Map In Their Heads." "that's Because Our Heads Have Something Inside Them," Said Lucy.

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.

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

We May Give Our Human Loves The Unconditional Allegiance Which We Owe Only To God. They They Become Gods: Then They Become Demons. Then They Will Destroy Us, And Also Destroy Themselves. For Natural Loves That Are Allowed To Become Gods Do Not Remain Loves. They Are Still Called So, But Can Become In Fact Complicated Forms Of Hatred.

You Can Make Anything By Writing.

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