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That Is The Key To History. Terrific Energy Is Expended - Civilizations Are Built Up - Excellent Institutions Devised; But Each Time Something Goes Wrong. Some Fatal Flaw Always Brings The Selfish And Cruel People To The Top, And Then It All Slides Back Into Misery And Ruin. In Fact, The Machine Conks. It Seems To Start Up All Right And Runs A Few Yards, And Then It Breaks Down.
-C. S. Lewis
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That Is The Key

C. S. Lewis
That Is The Key To History. Terrific Energy Is Expended - Civilizations Are Built Up - Excellent Institutions Devised; But Each Time Something Goes Wrong. Some Fatal Flaw Always Brings The Selfish And Cruel People To The Top, And Then It All Slides Back Into Misery And Ruin. In Fact, The Machine Conks. It Seems To Start Up All Right And Runs A Few Yards, And Then It Breaks Down.
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Facts
Surrender
Men Propound Mathematical Theorems In Besieged Cities, Conduct Metaphysical Arguments In Condemned Cells, Make Jokes On The Scaffold, Discuss A New Poem While Advancing To The Walls Of Quebec, And Comb Their Hair At Thermopylae. This Is Not Panache; It Is Our Nature.
Wall
Men
Hair
Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.
Heaven
Hell
Variety
Bridge-players Tell Me That There Must Be Some Money On The Game 'or Else People Won't Take It Seriously'. Apparently It's Like That. Your Bid - For God Or No God, For A Good God Or The Cosmic Sadist, For Eternal Life Or Nonentity - Will Not Be Serious If Nothing Much Is Staked On It. And You Will Never Discover How Serious It Was Until The Stakes Are Raised Horribly High, Until You Find That You Are Playing Not For Counters Or For Sixpences But For Every Penny You Have In The World.
Life
Player
Games
It Seems To Me That We Often, Almost Sulkily, Reject The Good That God Offers Us Because, At That Moment, We Expected Some Other Good.
Moments
That Moment
Rejects
To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are 'on' Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.
Play
Scene
Concern
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?
Land
Ideas
Return
The Imagined Beings Have Their Insides On The Outside; They Are Visible Souls. And Man As A Whole, Man Pitted Against The Universe, Have We Seen Him At All Till We See That He Is Like A Hero In A Fairy Tale?
Hero
Men
Soul
Friendship Is The Instrument By Which God Reveals To Each Of Us The Beauties Of Others.
Instruments
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.
Memories
Writing
Play
And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?
Children
Cost
Deeds
There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal. Nations, Cultures, Arts, Civilizations--these Are Mortal, And Their Life Is To Ours As The Life Of A Gnat.
Art
Gnats
Civilization
No Man Who Says, 'i'm As Good As You,' Believes It. He Would Not Say It If He Did.
Believe
Men
Ifs
No Thanks," Said Digory, "i Don't Know That I Care Much About Living On And On After Everyone I Know Is Dead. I'd Rather Live An Ordinary Time And Die And Go To Heaven.
Heaven
Care
Ordinary
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'.
Brain
Religion
Atheism
Need-love Says Of A Woman "i Cannot Live Without Her"; Gift-love Longs To Give Her Happiness, Comfort, Protection - If Possible, Wealth; Appreciative Love Gazes And Holds Its Breath And Is Silent, Rejoices That Such A Wonder Should Exist Even If Not For Him, Will Not Be Wholly Dejected By Losing Her, Would Rather Have It So Than Never To Have Seen Her At All.
Giving
Comfort
Needs
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.
Kings
Safe
Narnia
It Is Not Enough To Want To Get Rid Of One’s Sins, We Also Need To Believe In The One Who Saves Us From Our Sins.
Believe
Needs
Want
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.
Faith
God
Christian
But As For Aslan Himself, The Beavers And The Children Didn't Know What To Do Or Say When They Saw Him. People Who Have Not Been In Narnia Sometimes Think That A Thing Cannot Be Good And Terrible At The Same Time. If The Children Had Ever Thought So, They Were Cured Of It Now. For When They Tried To Look At Aslan's Face They Just Caught A Glimpse Of The Golden Mane And The Great, Royal, Solemn, Overwhelming Eyes; And Then They Found They Couldn't Look At Him And Went All Trembly.
Spiritual
Children
Eye
The Modern State Exists Not To Protect Our Rights But To Do Us Good Or Make Us Good - Anyway, To Do Something To Us Or To Make Us Something. Hence The New Name 'leaders' For Those Who Were Once 'rulers'. We Are Less Their Subjects Than Their Wards, Pupils, Or Domestic Animals. There Is Nothing Left Of Which We Can Say To Them, 'mind Your Own Business.' Our Whole Lives Are Their Business.
Animal
Rights
Names
Dyson And Tolkien Were The Immediate Human Causes Of My Conversion. Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends By A Good Fire?
Christian
Fire
Circles
I Was Wondering — I Mean — Could There Be Some Mistake? Because Nobody Called Me And Scrubb, You Know. It Was We Who Asked To Come Here. You Would Not Have Called Me Unless I Had Been Calling You.
Mistake
Mean
Calling
Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery.
Heart
Evil
Misery
Now Eros Makes A Man Really Want, Not A Woman, But One Particular Woman. In Some Mysterious But Quite Indisputable Fashion The Lover Desires The Beloved Herself, Not The Pleasure She Can Give.
Fashion
Men
Giving
We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.
Reading
Lovely
Knows
Thus We Have Now For Many Centuries Triumphed Over Nature To The Extent Of Making Certain Secondary Characteristics Of The Male (such As The Beard) Disagreeable To Nearly All The Females—and There Is More In That Than You Might Suppose.
Males
Female
Might
In Worship, God Imparts Himself To Us.
Prayer
Worship
Worship God
Perhaps Your Own Reiterated Cries Deafen You To The Voice You Hoped To Hear
Voice
Cry
Grief Observed
I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.
Helping
Praying
Because I Can
The Only Things We Can Keep Are The Things We Freely Give To God. What We Try To Keep For Ourselves Is Just What We Are Sure To Lose.
Letting Go
Giving
Trying
We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.
Stage
Producers
Playwright
Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.
Prayer
Doe
Change God
Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake.
Men
Doe
Sake
Our Experience Is Coloured Through And Through By Books And Plays And The Cinema, And It Takes Patience And Skill To Disentangle The Things We Have Really Learned From Life For Ourselves.
Book
Play
Skills
She Stepped Out From Among Their Shifting Confusion Of Lovely Lights And Shadows. A Circle Of Grass, Smooth As A Lawn, Met Her Eyes, With Dark Trees Dancing All Around It. And Then --oh Joy! For He Was There: The Huge Lion, Shining White In The Moonlight, With His Huge Black Shadow Underneath Him.
Eye
Dark
Light
I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.
Self
Use
Littles
Lucy Woke Out Of The Deepest Sleep You Can Imagine, With The Feeling That The Voice She Liked Best In The World Had Been Calling Her Name.
Sleep
Names
Voice
Getting Over A Painful Experience Is Much Like Crossing Monkey Bars. You Have To Let Go At Some Point In Order To Move Forward.
Inspirational
Change
Inspiring
If You Haven't Met Satan Recently, You Are Probably Going His Way!
Way
Satan
Mets
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.
Men
Scotch
Forever
Christ Offers Something For Nothing: He Even Offers Everything For Nothing.
Christ
Offers
There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditures Excludes Them.
Should
Charitable
Expenditures
What We Call Man's Power Over Nature Turns Out To Be A Power Exercised By Some Men Over Other Men With Nature As Its Instrument.
Men
Independence
Instruments
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.
Christian
Book
Writing
To Walk Out Of His Will Is To Walk Into Nowhere.
Inspirational
Walks
I Have Seen Landscapes . . . Which, Under A Particular Light, Make Me Feel That At Any Moment A Giant Might Raise His Head Over The Next Ridge.
Light
Giants
Landscape
My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.
Grief
Grieving
Ideas
Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.
Bereavement
Grief Observed
Universal
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)
Easter
Stars
Clothes
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.
Thinking
Groups
Different
If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?
Inspirational
Prayer
Silly
Praise Is The Mode Of Love Which Always Has Some Element Of Joy In It.
Joy
Elements
Praise
The Only People Who Hate Escapism Are Jailers.
Hate
People
Escapism
When You Have Reached Your Own Room, Be Kind To Those Who Have Chosen Different Doors And To Those Who Are Still In The Hall.
Inspirational
Doors
Different
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.
Children
Men
Midnight
A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.
Differences
World
Half Life
Obedience Is The Road To Freedom, Humility The Road To Pleasure, Unity The Road To Personality.
Humility
Personality
Unity
The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.
Self
Vices
Feckless
No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.
Happiness
Strong
Men
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.
Kings
Children
Book
It Is That Of An Unsatisfied Desire Which Is Itself More Desirable Than Any Other Satisfaction.
Friendship
Desire
Satisfaction
Now Sir, Said The Bulldog In His Business-like Way. 'are You A Animal, Vegetable, Or Mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew
Animal
Vegetables
Nephew
How Incessant And Great Are The Ills With Which A Prolonged Old Age Is Replete.
Age
Aging
Incessant
Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.
Optimistic
Thinking
Views
The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.
Law
Play
Keys
It Is Christ Himself, Not The Bible, Who Is The True Word Of God. The Bible, Read In The Right Spirit And With The Guidance Of Good Teachers, Will Bring Us To Him.
Teacher
Taken
Use
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.
Childhood
Adults
Approval
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.
Years
Supposing That
Temptation
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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