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Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

-C. S. Lewis

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Some Have Paid Me

C. S. Lewis

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Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

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When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The Religion Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft: Protestantism, In Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes

I Became My Own Only When I Gave Myself To Another.

When You Give Up A Bit Of Work Don't (unless It Is Hopelessly Bad) Throw It Away. Put It In A Drawer. It May Come In Useful Later. Much Of My Best Work, Or What I Think My Best, Is The Re-writing Of Things Begun And Abandoned Years Earlier.

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

God Has Not Been Trying An Experiment On My Faith Or Love In Order To Find Out Their Quality. He Knew It Already. It Was I Who Didn't. In This Trial He Makes Us Occupy The Dock, The Witness Box, And The Bench All At Once. He Always Knew That My Temple Was A House Of Cards. His Only Way Of Making Me Realize The Fact Was To Knock It Down.

To Live His Life In His Own Way, To Call His House His Castle, To Enjoy The Fruits Of His Own Labour, To Educate His Children As His Conscience Directs, To Save For Their Prosperity After His Death -- These Are Wishes Deeply Ingrained In Civilised Man. Their Realization Is Almost As Necessary To Our Virtues As To Our Happiness. From Their Total Frustration Disastrous Results Both Moral And Psychological Might Follow.

But The Great Thing To Remember Is That, Though Our Feelings Come And Go, His Love For Us Does Not. It Is Not Wearied By Our Sins, Or Our Indifference; And, Therefore, It Is Quite Relentless In Its Determination That We Shall Be Cured Of Those Sins, At Whatever Cost To Us, At Whatever Cost To Him.

The Only Moral That Is Of Any Value Is That Which Arises Inevitably From The Whole Cast Of The Author's Mind.

If They Embark On This Course The Difference Between The Old And The New Education Will Be An Important One. Where The Old Initiated, The New Merely 'conditions'. The Old Dealt With Its Pupils As Grown Birds Deal With Young Birds When They Teach Them To Fly; The New Deals With Them More As The Poultry-keeper Deals With Young Birds- Making Them Thus Or Thus For Purposes Of Which The Birds Know Nothing. In A Word, The Old Was A Kind Of Propagation-men Transmitting Manhood To Men; The New Is Merely Propaganda.

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.

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.

Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.

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.

The Intelligentsia (scientists Apart) Are Losing All Touch With, And All Influence Over, Nearly The Whole Human Race. Our Most Esteemed Poets And Critics Are Read By Our Most Esteemed Critics And Poets (who Don't Usually Like Them Much) And Nobody Else Takes Any Notice. An Increasing Number Of Highly Literate People Simply Ignore What The 'highbrows' Are Doing. It Says Nothing To Them. The Highbrows In Return Ignore And Insult Them.

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.

It Is Funny How Mortals Always Picture Us As Putting Things Into Their Minds: In Reality Our Best Work Is Done By Keeping Things Out.

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.

God Gives His Gifts Where He Finds The Vessel Empty Enough To Receive Them.

When The Time Comes To You At Which You Will Be Forced At Last To Utter The Speech Which Has Lain At The Center Of Your Soul For Years, Which You Have, All That Time, Idiot-like, Been Saying Over And Over, You'll Not Talk About The Joy Of Words. I Saw Well Why The Gods Do Not Speak To Us Openly, Nor Let Us Answer. Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.

We Know Nothing Of Religion Here: We Only Think Of Christ.

If Conversion To Christianity Makes No Improvement In A Man's Outward Actions – If He Continues To Be Just A Snobbish Or Spiteful Or Envious Or Ambitious As He Was Before – Then I Think We Must Suspect That His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

Anyone Who Is Honestly Trying To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened: One Of The Reasons Why It Needs No Special Education To Be A Christian Is That Christianity Is An Education Itself. That Is Why An Uneducated Believer Like Bunyan Was Able To Write A Book That Has Astonished The Whole World.

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

Shut Your Mouth; Open Your Eyes And Ears.

Oh, I Can See It Happening, Age After Age, And Growing Worse The More You Reveal Your Beauty: The Son Turning His Back On The Mother And The Bride On Her Groom, Stolen Away By This Everlasting Calling, Calling, Calling Of The Gods. Taken Where We Can't Follow. It Would Be Far Better For Us If You Were Foul And Ravening. We'd Rather You Drank Their Blood Than Stole Their Hearts. We'd Rather They Were Ours And Dead Than Yours And Made Immortal.

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe That The Sun Has Risen: Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike. Subjectivism About Moral Values Is Eternally Incompatible With Democracy. We And Our Rulers Are Of One Kind Only So Long As We Are Subject To One Law. But If There Is No Law Of Nature, The Ethos Of Any Society Is The Creation Of Its Rulers, Educators And Conditioners; And Every Creator Stands Above And Outside His Own Creation.

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

It's Not A Question Of God 'sending' Us To Hell. In Each Of Us There Is Something Growing Up Which Will Of Itself Be Hell Unless It Is Nipped In The Bud.

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

You Cannot Go On 'explaining Away' For Ever: You Will Find That You Have Explained Explanation Itself Away. You Cannot Go On 'seeing Through' Things For Ever. The Whole Point Of Seeing Through Something Is To See Something Through It.

For A Long Time I Used To Think This A Silly, Straw-splitting Distinction: How Could You Hate What A Man Did And Not Hate The Man? But Years Later It Occurred To Me That There Was One Man To Whom I Had Been Doing This All My Life - Namely Myself.

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.

Provocation Doesn't Make Me Ill-tempered: It Only Shows Me How Ill-tempered I Am.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.

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.

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gifts...thus A Heavy Task Is Laid Upon Gift-love. It Must Work Toward Its Own Abdication. We Must Aim At Making Ourselves Superfluous. The Hour When We Can Say 'they Need Me No Longer' Should Be Our Reward. But The Instinct, Simply In Its Own Nature, Has No Power To Fulfill This Law.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything, And Your Heart Will Most Certainly Be Wrung And Possibly Broken ... The Only Place Outside Heaven Where You Can Be Perfectly Safe From All The Dangers And Perturbations Of Love Is Hell.

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.

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

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

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World. The Wartime Posters Told Us That Careless Talk Costs Lives. It Is Equally True That Careless Lives Cost Talk. Our Careless Lives Set The Outer World Talking; And We Give Them Grounds For Talking In A Way That Throws Doubt On The Truth Of Christianity Itself.

Some People Write Heavily, Some Write Lightly. I Prefer The Light Approach Because I Believe There Is A Great Deal Of False Reverence About. There Is Too Much Solemnity And Intensity In Dealing With Sacred Matters; Too Much Speaking In Holy Tones.

Everyone Feels Benevolent If Nothing Happens To Be Annoying Him At The Moment.

What We Learn From Experience Depends On The Kind Of Philosophy We Bring To Experience.

Learning Experience

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.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

I Have Seen Great Beauty Of Spirit In Some Who Were Great Sufferers. I Have Seen Men, For The Most Part, Grow Better Not Worse With Advancing Years, And I Have Seen The Last Illness Produce Treasures Of Fortitude And Meekness From Most Unpromising Subjects.

In Order That We Finite Beings May Apprehend The Emporer He Translates His Glory Into Multiple Forms - Into Stars, Woods, Waters, Beasts, And The Bodies Of Men.

Believing Things On Authority Only Means Believing Them Because You Have Been Told Them By Someone You Think Trustworthy. Ninety-nine Per Cent Of The Things You Believe Are Believed On Authority... Every Historical Event In The World Is Believed On Authority. None Of Us Has Seen The Norman Conquest Or The Defeat Of The Armada.

Of Course It Should Be Pointed Out That, Though All Salvation Is Through Jesus, We Need Not Conclude That He Cannot Save Those Who Have Not Explicitly Accepted Him In This Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

Perhaps The Experience Had Been So Complete That Repetition Would Be Vulgarity - Like Asking To Hear The Same Symphony Twice In A Day.

We Do Not Truly See Light, We Only See Slower Things Lit By It, So That For Us Light Is On The Edge-the Last Thing We Know Before Things Become Too Swift For Us.

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

Love Is Not Affectionate Feeling, But A Steady Wish For The Loved Person's Ultimate Good As Far As It Can Be Obtained.

Falling In Love

Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

I Think We Must Fully Face The Fact That When Christianity Does Not Make A Man Very Much Better, It Makes Him Very Much Worse... Conversion May Make Of One Who Was, If No Better, No Worse Than An Animal, Something Like A Devil.

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

Wisdom: The First Error Is That Of The Southern People, And It Consists In Holding That These Eastern And Western Places Are Real Places. Give No Quarter To That Thought, Whether It Threatens You With Fear, Or Tempts You With Hopes. For This Is Superstition And All Who Believe It Will Come In The End To The Swamps, To The South And The Jungles, To The Far South. Part Of The Same Error Is To Think That The Landlord Is A Real Man.

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

Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed-this Is The Hardest Of All Temptations To Resist

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

Meaningless Combinations Of Words Do Not Suddenly Acquire Meaning Simply Because We Prefix To Them The Two Other Words ' God Can'.

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

For You Will Certainly Carry Out God's Purpose, However You Act, But It Makes A Difference To You Whether You Serve Like Judas Or Like John.

Making A Difference

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

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.

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.

I Think It Very Wrong To Pray For People While They Are In Distress And Then Not To Continue Praying, Now With Thanksgiving, When They Are Relieved.

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

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

The People Who Keep Asking If They Can't Lead A Decent Life Without Christ, Don't Know What Life Is About; If They Did They Would Know That 'a Decent Life' Is Mere Machinery Compared With The Thing We Men Are Really Made For.

I Begin To Suspect That The World Is Divided Not Only Into The Happy And The Unhappy, But Into Those Who Like Happiness And Those Who, Odd As It Seems, Really Don't.

The Humblest Praise Most, While Cranks & Malcontents Praise Least. Praise Almost Seems To Be Inner Health Made Audible

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

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.

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.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

Don't You Understand Anything? Isn't It Absolutely Essential To Keep A Fierce Left And A Fierce Right, Both On Their Toes And Each Terrified Of The Other? That's How We Get Things Done. Any Opposition To The N.i.c.e. Is Represented As A Left Racket In The Right Papers And A Right Racket In The Left Papers. If It's Properly Done, You Get Each Side Outbidding The Other In Support Of Us-to Refute The Enemy Slanders. Of Course We're Non-political. The Real Power Always Is.

We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe.

The Best Swordsman In The World May Be Disarmed By A Trick That's New To Him.

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.

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.

Man, Even Now, Can Do Wonders To Animals: My Cat And Dog Live Together In My House And Seem To Like It. It May Have Been One Of Man's Functions To Restore Peace To The Animal World, And If He Had Not Joined The Enemy He Might Have Succeeded In Doing So To An Extent Now Hardly Imaginable.

I'm Hunger. I'm Thirst. Where I Bite, I Hold Till I Die, And Even After Death They Must Cut Out My Mouthful From My Enemy's Body And Bury It With Me. I Can Fast A Hundred Years And Not Die. I Can Lie A Hundred Nights On The Ice And Not Freeze. I Can Drink A River Of Blood And Not Burst. Show Me Your Enemies.

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?)

Remember That All Worlds Draw To An End And That Noble Death Is A Treasure Which No One Is Too Poor To Buy.

It Matters Enormously If I Alienate Anyone From The Truth.

The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man... It Is The Comparison That Makes You Proud: The Pleasure Of Being Above The Rest. Once The Element Of Competition Is Gone, Pride Is Gone.

To Make Christianity A Private Affair While Banishing All Privacy Is To Relegate It To The Rainbow's End Or The Greek Calends.

At Other Times It Feels Like Being Mildly Drunk, Or Concussed. There Is A Sort Of Invisible Blanket Between The World And Me. I Find It Hard To Take In What Anyone Says.

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?

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. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.

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

Be Confident Small Immortals. You Are Not The Only Voice That All Things Utter, Nor Is There Eternal Silence In The Places Where You Cannot Come.

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.

Beloved," Said The Glorious One, "unless Thy Desire Had Been For Me Thou Wouldst Not Have Sought So Long And So Truly. For All Find What They Truly Seek.

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

We Are Finite And God Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

Life Is Too Deep For Words, So Don't Try To Describe It, Just Live It.

Self Improvement

Sanity ... Had It Ever Been More Than A Convention -- A Comfortable Set Of Blinkers, An Agreed Mode Of Wishful Thinking, Which Excluded From Our View The Full Strangeness And Malevolence Of The Universe We Are Compelled To Inhabit?

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

While We Are Actually Subjected To Them, The 'moods' And 'spirits' Of Nature Point No Morals. Overwhelming Gaiety, Insupportable Grandeur, Sombre Desolation Are Flung At You. Make What You Can Of Them, If You Must Make At All. The Only Imperative That Nature Utters Is, 'look. Listen. Attend.

You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.

Put First Things First

First Things First

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

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

But Pride Always Means Enmity -- It Is Enmity. And Not Only Enmity Between Man And Man, But Enmity To God.

Being Nice Doesn’t Make You Stupid. It Makes You Feel Good Because You Know You Are Gracious Enough To Forgive And Smart Enough To Realize How Distasteful Some People Can Be.

Joy Is Never In Our Power And Pleasure Often Is

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.

And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?

Never, Never Pin Your Whole Faith On Any Human Being: Not If He Is The Best And Wisest In The Whole World. There Are Lots Of Nice Things You Can Do With Sand; But Do Not Try Building A House On It.

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.

Look For Yourself, And You Will Find In The Long Run Only Hatred, Loneliness, Despair, Rage, Ruin, And Decay. But Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

Until You Have Given Up Yourself To Him, You Will Not Have A Real Self.

With The Possible Exception Of The Equator, Everything Begins Somewhere.

Exception To The Rule

Will The Others See You Too?" Asked Lucy. "certainly Not At First," Said Aslan. "later On, It Depends." "but They Won’t Believe Me!" Said Lucy. "it Doesn’t Matter.

I Wish I Were Younger. What Inclines Me Now To Think You May Be Right In Regarding [evolution] As The Central And Radical Lie In The Whole Web Of Falsehood That Now Governs Our Lives Is Not So Much Your Arguments Against It As The Fanatical And Twisted Attitudes Of Its Defenders.

You Have Gone Into The Temple...and Found Him, As Always, There.

I Don't Want To Hold You Hand!

I Think Each Village Was Meant To Feel Pity For Its Own Sick And Poor Whom It Can Help And I Doubt If It Is The Duty Of Any Private Person To Fix His Mind On Ills Which He Cannot Help. This May Even Become An Escape From The Works Of Charity We Really Can Do To Those We Know. God May Call Any One Of Us To Respond To Some Far Away Problem Or Support Those Who Have Been So Called. But We Are Finite And He Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

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.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

I Don't Pray So That I Can Change God. I Pray So That God Can Change Me.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

We Are Told That Christ Was Killed For Us, That His Death Has Washed Out Our Sins, And That By Dying He Disabled Death Itself. That Is The Formula. That Is Christianity. That Is What Has To Be Believed.

But One Of The Worst Results Of Being A Slave And Being Forced To Do Things Is That When There Is No One To Force You Any More You Find You Have Almost Lost The Power Of Forcing Yourself.

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

The Real Moon,if You Could Reach It And Survive It, Would In A Deep And Deadly Sense Be Just Like Anywhere Else...no Man Would Find An Abiding Strangness On The Moon Unless He Were The Sort Of Man Who Could Find It In His Own Back Garden.

Catch {a Man} At The Moment When He Is Really Poor In Spirit And Smuggle Into His Mind The Gratifying Reflection, "by Jove, I'm Being Humble," And Almost Immediately Pride - Pride At His Own Humility - Will Appear.

I#pray Because The Need Flows Out Of Me All The Time-walking And Sleeping. It Does Not Change #‎ God - It Changes Me.

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

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

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.

God Is Love, And That Love Works Through Men-especially Through The Whole Community Of Christians.

People Blush At Praise--not Only Praise Of Their Bodies, But Praise Of Anything That Is Theirs.

If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.

As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.

A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.

Screwtape Letters

The Modern Idea Of A Great Man Is One Who Stands At The Lonely Extremity Of Some Single Line Of Development--

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

The Only Thing Christianity Can Not Be...is Moderately Important.

It Was Not For Societies Or States, That Christ Died, But For Men.

Until The Theologians And The Ordained Clergy Begin To Communicate With Ordinary People In The Vernacular, In A Way That They Can Understand, I’m Going To Have To Do This Sort Of Thing.

By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!

Child, That Is Why All The Rest Are Now A Horror To Her. That Is What Happens To Those Who Pluck And Eat Fruits At The Wrong Time And In The Wrong Way. Oh, The Fruit Is Good, But They Loath It Ever After.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

Morality Or Duty Never Yet Made A Man Happy In Himself Or Dear To Others.

She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.

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.

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.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.

Tea Should Be Taken In Solitude.

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.

Every Good Book Should Be Entertaining. A Good Book Will Be More; It Must Not Be Less. Entertainment…is Like A Qualifying Examination. If A Fiction Can’t Provide That, We May Be Excused From Inquiring Into Its Higher Qualities.

When You Go To Church You Are Really Listening In To The Secret Wireless From Our Friends.

Christian Theology Can Fit In Science, Art, Morality, And The Sub-christian Religious. The Scientific Point Of View Cannot Fit Any Of These Things, Not Even Science Itself.

Since I Am I, I Must Make An Act Of Self-surrender, However Small Or However Easy, In Living To God Rather Than To My Self.

At All Ages, If [fantasy And Myth] Is Used Well By The Author And Meets The Right Reader, It Has The Same Power: To Generalize While Remaining Concrete, To Present In Palpable Form Not Concepts Or Even Experiences But Whole Classes Of Experience, And To Throw Off Irrelevancies. Bat At Its Best It Can Do More; It Can Give Us Experiences We Have Never Had And Thus, Instead Of 'commenting On Life,' Can Add To It.

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

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

The Promise, Made When I Am In Love, To Be True To The Beloved As Long As I Live, Commits Me To Being True Even If I Cease To Be In Love.

A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line.

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

Would It Not Be Better To Be Dead Than To Have This Horrible Fear That Aslan Has Come And Is Not Like The Aslan We Have Believed In And Longed For? It Is As If The Sun Rose One Day And Were A Black Sun.

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.

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.

Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.

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

Pity Was Meant To Be A Spur That Drives Joy To Help Misery. But It Can Be Used The Wrong Way Round. It Can Be Used For A Kind Of Blackmailing. Those Who Choose Misery Can Hold Joy Up To Ransom, By Pity.

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

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

A Noble Hunger, Long Unsatisfied, Met At Last Its Proper Food.

One Flesh. Or If You Prefer, One Ship. The Starboard Engine Has Gone. I, The Port Engine, Must Chug Along Somehow Till We Make Harbour. Or Rather, Till The Journey Ends.

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

In The Ancient World Individuals Have Sold Themselves As Slaves, In Order To Eat. So In Society. Here Is A Witch-doctor Who Can Save Us From The Sorcerers - A War-lord Who Can Save Us From The Barbarians - A Church That Can Save Us From Hell. Give Them What They Ask, Give Ourselves To Them Bound And Blindfold, If Only They Will! Perhaps The Terrible Bargain Will Be Made Again. We Cannot Blame Men For Making It. We Can Hardly Wish Them Not To. Yet We Can Hardly Bear That They Should.

Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

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

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.

The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

An Author Should Never Conceive Himself As Bringing Into Existence Beauty Or Wisdom Which Did Not Exist Before, But Simply And Solely As Trying To Embody In Terms Of His Own Art Some Reflection Of Eternal Beauty And Wisdom.

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

This Moment Contains All Moments.

I Believe That There Are Too Many Accommodating Preachers... Jesus Christ Did Not Say "go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right." The Gospel Is Something Completely Different. In Fact, It Is Directly Opposed To The World.

Getting Over A Painful Experience Is Much Like Crossing Monkey Bars. You Have To Let Go At Some Point In Order To Move Forward.

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

Our Heavenly Father Has Provided Many Delightful Inns For Us Along Our Journey, But He Takes Great Care To See That We Do Not Mistake Any Of Them For Home.

Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even Agony Into A Glory

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