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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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That Raises A Terrible

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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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.

Humility Is Self-forgetfulness.

Aslan" Said Lucy "you're Bigger". "that Is Because You Are Older, Little One" Answered He. "not Because You Are?" "i Am Not. But Every Year You Grow, You Will Find Me Bigger".

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.

There Is But One Good; That Is God. Everything Else Is Good When It Looks To Him And Bad When It Turns From Him.

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.

In The Moral Sphere, Every Act Of Justice Or Charity Involves Putting Ourselves In The Other Person's Place And Thus Transcending Our Own Competitive Particularity.

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.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms.

Oh Trees, Trees, Trees...wake. Don't You Remember It? Don't You Remember Me? Dryads And Hamadryads, Come Out, Come [out] To Me.

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

[to Have Faith In Christ] Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice. Thus If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way. Not Doing These Things In Order To Be Saved, But Because He Has Begun To Save You Already. Not Hoping To Get To Heaven As A Reward For Your Actions, But Inevitably Wanting To Act In A Certain Way Because A First Faint Gleam Of Heaven Is Already Inside You.

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.

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

Don't Shine So That Others Can See You. Shine So That Through You, Others Can See Him.

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

Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

[m]an Has Been Accustomed, Ever Since He Was A Boy, To Having A Dozen Incompatible Philosophies Dancing About Together Inside His Head. He Doesn't Think Of Doctrines As Primarily "true" Or "false," But As "academic" Or "practical," "outworn" Or "contemporary," "conventional" Or "ruthless." Jargon, Not Argument, Is Your Best Ally In Keeping Him From The Church. Don't Waste Time Trying To Make Him Think That Materialism Is True! Make Him Think It Is Strong Or Stark Or Courageous—that It Is The Philosophy Of The Future. That's The Sort Of Thing He Cares About.

Children Are Not Deceived By Fairy-tales; They Are Often And Gravely Deceived By School-stories. Adults Are Not Deceived By Science-fiction ; They Can Be Deceived By The Stories In The Women's Magazines.

The Stamp Of The Saint Is That He Can Waive His Own Rights And Obey The Lord Jesus.

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

We Delight To Praise What We Enjoy Because The Praise Not Merely Expresses But Completes The Enjoyment; It Is Its Appointed Consummation. It Is Not Out Of Compliment That Lovers Keep On Telling One Another How Beautiful They Are; The Delight Is Incomplete Till It Is Expressed.

If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.

If Nothing Is Self-evident, Nothing Can Be Proved. Similarly If Nothing Is Obligatory For Its Own Sake, Nothing Is Obligatory At All.

I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

Life With God Is Not Immunity From Difficulties, But Peace In Difficulties.

When You Come To Knowing God, The Initiative Lies On His Side. If He Does Not Show Himself, Nothing You Can Do Will Enable You To Find Him. And, In Fact, He Shows Much More Of Himself To Some People Than To Others—not Because He Has Favourites, But Because It Is Impossible For Him To Show Himself To A Man Whose Whole Mind And Character Are In The Wrong Condition. Just As Sunlight, Though It Has No Favourites, Cannot Be Reflected In A Dusty Mirror As Clearly As In A Clean One.

When I Lay These Questions Before God I Get No Answer. But A Rather Special Sort Of 'no Answer.' It Is Not The Locked Door. It Is More Like A Silent, Certainly Not Uncompassionate, Gaze. As Though He Shook His Head Not In Refusal But Waiving The Question. Like, 'peace, Child; You Don't Understand.

At A Well In A Yard They Met A Man Who Was Beating A Boy. The Stick Burst Into A Flower In The Mans Hand. He Tried To Drop It, But It Stuck To His Hand. His Arm Became A Branch, His Body The Trunk Of A Tree, His Feet Took Root.

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

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.

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.

The Hills And Valleys Of Heaven Will Be To Those You Now Experience Not As A Copy Is To An Original, Nor As The Substitute Is To The Genuine Article, But As The Flower To The Root, Or The Diamond To The Coal.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. I Have Heard Others, And I Have Heard Myself, Recounting Cruelties And Falsehoods Committed In Boyhood As If They Were No Concern Of The Present Speaker's, And Even With Laughter. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin. The Guilt Is Washed Out Not By Time But By Repentance And The Blood Of Christ: If We Have Repented These Early Sins We Should Remember The Price Of Our Forgiveness And Be Humble.

All Day I Have Been Tossed And Whirled In A Preposterous Happiness; Was It An Elf In The Blood? Or A Bird In The Brain? Or Even Part Of The Cloudily Crested, Fifty-league-long, Loud, Uplifted Wave Of A Journeying Angels Transit Over And Through My Heart?

God Whispers In Our Pleasures, But Shouts In Our Pain.

Pain And Pleasure

You Have A Traitor There, Aslan," Said The Witch. Of Course Everyone Present Knew That She Meant Edmund. But Edmund Had Got Past Thinking About Himself After All He'd Been Through And After The Talk He'd Had That Morning. He Just Went On Looking At Aslan. It Didn't Seem To Matter What The Witch Said.

The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. Our Charities Should Pinch And Hamper Us. If We Live At The Same Level Of Affluence As Other People Who Have Our Level Of Income, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little.

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.

‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

Miracles Are For Beginners.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact. The Old Myth Of The Dying God, Without Ceasing To Be Myth, Comes Down From The Heaven Of Legend And Imagination To The Earth Of History. It Happens - At A Particular Date, In A Particular Place, Followed By Definable Historical Consequences. We Pass From A Balder Or An Osiris, Dying Nobody Knows When Or Where, To A Historical Person Crucified (it Is All In Order) Under Pontius Pilate. By Becoming Fact It Does Not Cease To Be Myth: That Is The Miracle.

Creatures Are Not Born With Desires Unless Satisfaction For Those Desires Exists. A Baby Feels Hunger: Well, There Is Such A Thing As Food. A Duckling Wants To Swim: Well, There Is Such A Thing As Water...if I Find In Myself A Desire, Which No Experience In This World Can Satisfy, The Most Probable Explanation Is That I Was Made For Another World.

Odd, The Way The Less The Bible Is Read The More It Is Translated

Don't You Mind," Said Puddleglum. "there Are No Accidents. Our Guide Is Aslan; And He Was There When The Giant King Caused The Letters To Be Cut, And He Knew Already All Things That Would Come Of Them; Including This.

His Face Had Become Very Red And His Mouth And Fingers Were Sticky. He Did Not Look Either Clever Or Handsome, Whatever The Queen Might Say.

We Want, In Fact, Not So Much A Father In Heaven As A Grandfather In Heaven: A Senile Benevolence Who, As They Say, "liked To See Young People Enjoying Themselves" And Whose Plan For The Universe Was Simply That It Might Be Truly Said At The End Of Each Day, "a Good Time Was Had By All."

Prostitutes Are In No Danger Of Finding Their Present Life So Satisfactory That They Cannot Turn To God: The Proud, The Avaricious, The Self-righteous, Are In That Danger.

Very Few Modern People Think Friendship A Love Of Comparable Value Or Even A Love At All.

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.

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

It Is A Dreadful Truth That The State Of Having To Depend Solely On God Is What We All Dread Most.... It Is Good Of Him To Force Us; But Dear Me, How Hard To Feel That It Is Good At The Time.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

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

A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Till You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On.

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. The Smallest Good Act Today Is The Capture Of A Strategic Point From Which, A Few Months Later, You May Be Able To Go On To Victories You Never Dreamed Of. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.

My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.

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.

For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.

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

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.

That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Part Of Eternal Reality.

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

The Universe Rings True Whenever You Fairly Test It.

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves.

The Choice Of Every Lost Soul Can Be Expressed In The Words "better To Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven." There Is Always Something They Insist On Keeping, Even At The Price Of Misery.

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.

An Open Mind, In Questions That Are Not Ultimate, Is Useful. But An Open Mind About The Ultimate Foundations Either Of Theoretical Or Of Practical Reason Is Idiocy. If A Man's Mind Is Open On These Things, Let His Mouth At Least Be Shut. He Can Say Nothing To The Purpose. Outside The Tao There Is No Ground For Criticizing Either The Tao Or Anything Else.

As To...old Composers Like Schubert Or Beethoven, I Imagine That, While Modern Music Expresses Both Feeling, Thought And Imagination, They Expressed Pure Feeling. And You Know All Day Sitting At Work, Eating, Walking, Etc., You Have Hundreds Of Feelings That Can't Be Put Into Words. And That Is Why I Think That In A Sense Music Is The Highest Of The Arts, Because It Really Begins Where The Others Leave Off.

This Act [creation], As It Is For God, Must Always Remain Totally Inconceivable To Man. For We--even Our Poets And Musicians And Inventors--never, In The Ultimate Sense Make. We Only Build. We Always Have Materials To Build From. All We Can Know About The Act Of Creation Must Be Derived From What We Can Gather About The Relation Of The Creatures To Their Creator

Gratitude Looks To The Past And Love To The Present; Fear, Avarice, Lust, And Ambition Look Ahead.

Tribulations Cannot Cease Until God Either Sees Us Remade Or Sees That Our Remaking Is Now Hopeless.

One Of The Most Dangerous Errors Is That Civilization Is Automatically Bound To Increase And Spread. The Lesson Of History Is The Opposite; Civilization Is A Rarity, Attained With Difficulty And Easily Lost. The Normal State Of Humanity Is Barbarism, Just As The Normal Surface Of The Planet Is Salt Water. Land Looms Large In Our Imagination And Civilization In History Books, Only Because Sea And Savagery Are To Us Less Interesting.

We May Note In Passing That He (jesus) Was Never Regarded As A Mere Moral Teacher. He Did Not Produce That Effect On Any Of The People Who Actually Met Him. He Produced Mainly Three Effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There Was No Trace Of People Expressing Mild Admiration.

If You Live For The Next World, You Get This One In The Deal; But If You Live Only For This World, You Lose Them Both.

He Told People That Their Sins Were Forgiven, And Never Waited To Consult All The Other People Whom Their Sins Had Undoubtedly Injured. He Unhesitatingly Behaved As If He Was The Party Chiefly Concerned, The Person Chiefly Offended In All Offenses. This Makes Sense Only If He Really Was God Whose Laws Are Broken And Whose Love Is Wounded In Every Sin.

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

The Longer We Stay In Hell, The More We Become Attached To It.

In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.

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

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Or Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You.

Humanity Does Not Pass Through Phases As A Train Passes Through Stations: Being Alive, It Has The Privilege Of Always Moving Yet Never Leaving Anything Behind. Whatever We Have Been, In Some Sort We Are Still.

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

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

When Things Go Wrong, You'll Find They Usually Go On Getting Worse For Some Time; But When Things Once Start Going Right They Often Go On Getting Better And Better.

When Things Go Wrong

Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.... The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep On Bringing Us Back, Time After Time, To The Old Simple Principles Which We Are All So Anxious Not To See; Like Bringing A Horse Back And Back To The Fence It Has Refused To Jump Or Bringing A Child Back And Back To The Bit In Its Lesson That It Wants To Shirk.

No One Can Say 'he Jests At Scars Who Never Felt A Wound' For I Have Never For One Moment Been In A State Of Mind To Which Even The Imagination Of Serious Pain Was Less Than Intolerable. If Any Man Is Safe From The Danger Of Under-estimating This Adversary, I Am That Man.

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

Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky.

Screwtape Letters

I Have Read The Aeneid Through More Often Than I Have Read Any Long Poem.

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

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons; And I'm Not Sure That Old Age Isn't The Best Part Of Life.

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.

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs. There Is Not One Of Them Which Will Not Make Us Into Devils If We Set It Up As An Absolute Guide. You Might Think Love Of Humanity In General Was Safe, But It Is Not. If You Leave Out Justice You Will Find Yourself Breaking Agreements And Faking Evidence In Trials "for The Sake Of Humanity", And Become In The End A Cruel And Treacherous Man.

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

Emeth Came Walking Forward Into The Open Strip Of Grass Between The Bonfire And The Stable. His Eyes Were Shining, His Face Was Solemn, His Hand Was On His Sword-hilt, And He Carried His Head High. Jill Felt Like Crying When She Looked At His Face. And Jewel Whispered In The King's Ear, "by The Lion's Mane, I Almost Love This Young Warrior, Calormene Though He Be. He Is Worthy Of A Better God Than Tash.

Yes, Pride Is A Perpetual Nagging Temptation. Keep On Knocking It On The Head, But Don't Be Too Worried About It. As Long As One Knows One Is Proud, One Is Safe From The Worst Form Of Pride.

We Regard God As An Airman Regards His Parachute; It's There For Emergencies But He Hopes He'll Never Have To Use It.

Isn't It Funny How Day By Day Nothing Changes, But When You Look Back, Everything Is Different.

Because We Love Something Else More Than This World, We Love Even This World More Than Those Who Know No Other.

Oh, Adam’s Sons, How Cleverly You Defend Yourselves Against All That Might Do You Good!

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

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues.

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

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

I Think I Am Beginning To Understand Why Grief Feels Like Suspense. It Comes From The Frustration Of So Many Impulses That Had Become Habitual. Thought After Thought Feeling After Feeling Action After Action Had H. For Their Object. Now Their Target Is Gone. I Keep On Through Habit Fitting An Harrow To The String Then I Remember And Have To Lay The Bow Down. So Many Roads Lead Through To H. I Set Out On One Of Them. But Now There's An Impassable Frontier-post Across It. So Many Roads Once Now So Many Culs De Sac.

Don't Use Words Too Big For The Subject. Don't Say 'infinitely' When You Mean 'very'; Otherwise You'll Have No Word Left When You Want To Talk About Something Really Infinite.

“who Are You?” One Who Has Waited Long For You To Speak.

The Human Qualities Of The Raw Materials Show Through. Naivety, Error, Contradiction, Even (as In The Cursing Psalms) Wickedness Are Not Removed. The Total Result Is Not "the Word Of God" In The Sense That Every Passage In Itself, Gives Impeccable Science Or History. It Carries The Word Of God.

No Christian And, Indeed, No Historian Could Accept The Epigram Which Defines Religion As 'what A Man Does With His Solitude.'

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man.

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

Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

Safety And Happiness Can Only Come From Individuals, Classes, And Nations Being Honest And Fair And Kind To Each Other.

The Question About Progress Has Become The Question Whether We Can Discover Any Way Of Submitting To The Worldwide Paternalism Of A Technocracy Without Losing All Personal Privacy And Independence. Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

He Is Not The Soul Of Nature, Nor Any Part Of Nature. He Inhabits Eternity: He Dwells In A High And Holy Place: Heaven Is His Throne, Not His Vehicle, Earth Is His Footstool, Not His Vesture. One Day He Will Dismantle Both And Make A New Heaven And Earth. He Is Not To Be Identified Even With The 'divine Spark' In Man. He Is 'god And Not Man.

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

A Myth Is A Lie That Conveys A Truth.

If You Are Worried About The People Outside, The Most Unreasonable Thing You Can Do Is Remain Outside Yourself. Christians Are Christ's Body...every Addition To That Body Enables Him To Do More. If You Want To Help Those Outside You Must Add Your Own Little Cell To The Body Of Christ Who Along Can Help Them. Cutting Off A Man's Fingers Would Be A Odd Way Of Getting Him To Do More Work.

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

The Search For A "suitable" Church Makes The Man A Critic Where God Wants Him To Be A Pupil. What He Wants From The Layman In Church Is An Attitude Which May, Indeed, Be Critical In The Sense Of Rejecting What Is False Or Unhelpful But Which Is Wholly Uncritical In The Sense That It Does Not Appraise- Does Not Waste Time In Thinking About What It Rejects, But Lays Itself Open In Uncommenting, Humble Receptivity To Any Nourishment That Is Going.

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

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.

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

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.

Few Men Looked On Her Without Becoming, In A Certain Fashion, Her Lovers. But It Was The Kind Of Love That Made Them Not Less True, But Truer, To Their Own Wives.

There Is, Hidden Or Flaunted, A Sword Between The Sexes Till An Entire Marriage Reconciles Them.

Not My Idea Of God, But God. Not My Idea Of H., But H. Yes, And Also Not My Idea Of My Neighbour, But My Neighbour. For Don't We Often Make This Mistake As Regards People Who Are Still Alive -- Who Are With Us In The Same Room? Talking And Acting Not To The Man Himself But To The Picture -- Almost The Précis -- We've Made Of Him In Our Own Minds? And He Has To Depart From It Pretty Widely Before We Even Notice The Fact.

God Loves Us Not Because We're Lovable, Because He Is Love. Not Because He Needs To Receive, Because He Delights To Give.

Of All Tyrannies, A Tyranny Sincerely Exercised For The Good Of Its Victims May Be The Most Oppressive. It Would Be Better To Live Under Robber Barons Than Under Omnipotent Moral Busybodies. The Robber Baron's Cruelty May Sometimes Sleep, His Cupidity May At Some Point Be Satiated; But Those Who Torment Us For Our Own Good Will Torment Us Without End For They Do So With The Approval Of Their Own Conscience.

People Who Bore One Another Should Meet Seldom; People Who Interest One Another, Often.

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

I Have Been Feeling Very Much Lately That Cheerful Insecurity Is What Our Lord Asks Of Us.

We Come To Scripture Not To Learn A Subject But To Steep Ourselves In A Person.

A Sensible Human Once Said, "if People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit"; And Again, "she's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others You Can Always Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

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

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.

We Treat Our Dogs As If They Were "almost Human": That Is Why They Really Become "almost Human" In The End.

An Almost Perfect Relationship With His Father Was The Earthly Root Of All His Wisdom. From His Own Father, He Said, He First Learned That Fatherhood Must Be At The Core Of The Universe. [speaking Of George Macdonald]

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

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable.

My Will, Shall Become Your Will. My Heart, Shall Become Your Heart.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

Most Of All, Perhaps, We Need An Intimate Knowledge Of The Past. Not That The Past Has Anything Magical About It, But We Cannot Study The Future.

Shut Your Mouth; Open Your Eyes And Ears.

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

God Descends To Re-ascend. He Comes Down; Down From The Heights Of Absolute Being Into Time And Space, Down Into Humanity ... Down To The Very Roots And Sea-bed Of The Nature He Has Created. But He Goes Down To Come Up Again And Bring The Ruined World Up With Him.

It Is Hard To Have Patience With People Who Say 'there Is No Death' Or 'death Doesn't Matter.' There Is Death. And Whatever Is Matters. And Whatever Happens Has Consequences, And It And They Are Irrevocable And Irreversible. You Might As Well Say That Birth Doesn't Matter.

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.

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

Christian Inspirational

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

A Creature Revolting Against A Creator Is Revolting Against The Source Of His Own Powers-including Even His Power To Revolt...it Is Like The Scent Of A Flower Trying To Destroy The Flower.

Man Is Not The Centre. God Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Man. Man Does Not Exist For His Own Sake.

Above All Else , The Devil Can Not Stand To Be Mocked.

A Cold, Self-righteous Prig Who Goes Regularly To Church May Be Far Nearer To Hell Than A Prostitute.

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

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.

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.

Each Generation Exercises Power Over Its Successors: And Each, In So Far As It Modifies The Environment Bequeathed To It And Rebels Against Tradition, Resists And Limits The Power Of Its Predecessors.

Thought Provoking

If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.

[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.

Every Christian Would Agree That A Man's Spiritual Health Is Exactly Proportional To His Love For God.

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

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

A Christian Is Not Someone Who Never Goes Wrong, But One Who Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Again, Because The Christ-life Is Inside Him.

It's So Large" "it's The World Dear, Did You Think It'd Be Small?" "smaller

An Ulster Scot May Come To Disbelieve In God, But Not To Wear His Weekday Clothes On The Sabbath.

Many Things, Such As Loving, Going To Sleep, Or Behaving Unaffectedly - Are Done Worst When We Try Hardest To Do Them.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them.... I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

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

Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.

When Christ Died, He Died For You Individually Just As Much As If You Had Been The Only Person In The World.

The Value Of The Individual Does Not Lie In Him. He Receives It By Union With Christ.

You Must Make Your Choice: Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God, Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool, You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us. He Did Not Intend To.

We Must Meet Children As Equals In That Area Of Our Nature Where We Are Their Equals...the Child As Reader Is Neither To Be Patronized Nor Idolized: We Talk To Him As Man To Man.

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

If I, Being What I Am, Can Consider That I Am In Some Sense A Christian, Why Should The Different Vices Of Those People In The Next Pew Prove That Their Religion Is Mere Hypocrisy And Convention?

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.

We Must Picture Hell As A State Where Everyone Is Perpetually Concerned About His Own Dignity And Advancement, Where Everyone Has A Grievance, And Where Everyone Lives The Deadly Serious Passions Of Envy, Self-importance, And Resentment.

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.

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not.

It Is Hardly Complimentary To God That We Should Choose Him As An Alternative To Hell.

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

Aravis Also Had Many Quarrels (and, I'm Afraid, Even Fights) With Cor, But They Always Made It Up Again: So That Years Later, When They Were Grown Up, They Were So Used To Quarrelling And Making It Up Again That They Got Married So As To Go On Doing It More Conveniently.

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.

There Was A Boy Called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, And He Almost Deserved It.

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

Onward And Upward! To Narnia And The North!

Onward And Upward

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

We Are Not Necessarily Doubting That God Will Do The Best For Us; We Are Wondering How Painful The Best Will Turn Out To Be.

Those Of Us Who Are Blamed When Old For Reading Childish Books Were Blamed When Children For Reading Books Too Old For Us.

Something Quite Unexpected Has Happened. It Came This Morning Early. For Various Reasons, Not In Themselves At All Mysterious, My Heart Was Lighter Than It Had Been For Many Weeks. ... And Suddenly, At The Very Moment When, So Far, I Mourned H. Least, I Remembered Her Best. Indeed It Was Something (almost) Better Than Memory; An Instantaneous, Unanswerable Impression. To Say It Was Like A Meeting Would Be Going Too Far. Yet There Was That In It Which Tempts One To Use Those Words. It Was As Though The Lifting Of The Sorrow Removed A Barrier.

But Now I Discovered The Wonderful Power Of Wine. I Understood Why Men Become Drunkards. For The Way It Worked On Me Was Not At All That It Blotted Out These Sorrows, But That It Made Them Seem Glorious And Noble, Like Sad Music, And I Somehow Great And Revered For Feeling Them.

If Naturalism Were True Then All Thoughts Whatever Would Be Wholly The Result Of Irrational Causes. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Nothing Is Very Strong: Strong Enough To Steal Away A Man's Best Years Not In Sweet Sins But In A Dreary Flickering Of The Mind Over It Knows Not What And Knows Not Why, In The Gratification Of Curiosities So Feeble That The Man Is Only Half Aware Of Them, In Drumming Of Fingers And Kicking Of Heels, In Whistling Tunes That He Does Not Like, Or In The Long, Dim Labyrinth Of Reveries That Have Not Even Lust Or Ambition To Give Them A Relish, But Which, Once Chance Association Has Started Them, The Creature Is Took Weak And Fuddled To Shake Off.

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

All Is Summed Up In The Prayer Which A Young Female Human Is Said To Have Uttered Recently: "o God, Make Me A Normal Twentieth-century Girl!" Thanks To Our Labors, This Will Mean Increasingly: "make Me A Minx, A Moron, And A Parasite.

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Christopher Columbus

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