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The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

-C. S. Lewis

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The Christian Idea Of

C. S. Lewis

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The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

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The Fact That You Are Giving Money To Charity Does Not Mean That You Need Not Try To Find Out Whether That Charity Is A Fraud Or Not.

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.

People Who Know A Lot Of The Same Things Can Hardly Help Talking About Them.

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

God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself. He Himself Is The Fuel Our Spirits Were Designed To Burn, Or The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On. There Is No Other. That Is Why It Is Just No Good Asking God To Make Us Happy In Our Own Way Without Bothering About Religion. God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There.

The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles But To Irrigate Deserts. The Right Defence Against False Sentiments Is To Inculcate Just Sentiments. By Starving The Sensibility Of Our Pupils We Only Make Them Easier Prey To The Propagandist When He Comes. For Famished Nature Will Be Avenged And A Hard Heart Is No Infallible Protection Against A Soft Head.

It Is Often Little Things That Are Hardest To Stand.

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

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

Come, Live With Me And You'll Know Me.

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.

You Ask Whether I Have Ever Been In Love: Fool As I Am, I Am Not Such A Fool As That. But If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business. But Though I Have No Personal Experience Of The Things They Call Love, I Have What Is Better - The Experience Of Sappho, Of Euripides, Of Catallus, Of Shakespeare, Of Spenser, Of Austen, Of Bronte, Of Anyone Else I Have Read.

A Man's Physical Hunger Does Not Prove That Man Will Get Any Bread; He May Die Of Starvation On A Raft In The Atlantic. But Surely A Man's Hunger Does Prove That He Comes Of A Race Which Repairs Its Body By Eating And Inhabits A World Where Eatable Substances Exist. In The Same Way, Though I Do Not Believe (i Wish I Did) That My Desire For Paradise Proves That I Shall Enjoy It, I Think It A Pretty Good Indication That Such A Thing Exists And That Some Men Will.

Those Who Tread 'adult' As A Term Of Approval Cannot Hope To Be Considered Adult Themselves. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Along With The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

Whenever All Men Are...hastening To Be Slaves Or Tyrants We Make Liberalism The Prime Bogey.

Screwtape Letters

Here Are Beauties Which Pierce Like Swords Or Burn Like Cold Iron. Here Is A Book [the Lord Of The Rings] Which Will Break Your Heart."

Bad Art Is Never Really Enjoyed In The Same Sense In Which Good Art Is Enjoyed. It Is Only "liked": It Never Startles, Prostrates, And Takes Captive.

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.

Got To Start By Finding It, Have We? Can't Start By Looking For It, I Suppose?

Am I To Understand,' Said Reepicheep To Lucy After A Long Stare At Eustace, 'that This Singularly Discourteous Person Is Under Your Majesty's Protection? Because, If Not--

Perhaps Your Own Reiterated Cries Deafen You To The Voice You Hoped To Hear

It Is In The Process Of Being Worshipped That God Communicates His Presence To Men.

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.

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

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

In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.

The Long, Dull, Monotonous Years Of Middle-aged Prosperity Or Middle-aged Adversity Are Excellent Campaigning Weather For The Devil.

The Castle Of Cair Paravel On Its Little Hill Towered Up Above Them; Before Them Were The Sands, With Rocks And Little Pools Of Salt Water, And Seaweed, And The Smell Of The Sea And Long Miles Of Bluish-green Waves Breaking For Ever And Ever On The Beach. And Oh, The Cry Of The Seagulls! Have You Ever Heard It? Can You Remember?

Nobody Who Gets Enough Food And Clothing In A World Where Most Are Hungry And Cold Has Any Business To Talk About 'misery.'

What Flows Into You From Myth Is Not Truth But Reality (truth Is Always About Something, But Reality Is That About Which Truth Is), And Therefore, Every Myth Becomes The Father Of Innumerable Truths On The Abstract Level.

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God. But Every Novelty Prevents This. It Fixes Our Attention On The Service Itself; And Thinking About Worship Is A Different Thing Than Worshipping ... 'tis Mad Idolatry That Makes The Service Greater Than The God.

If You Picture Time As A Straight Line Along Which We Have To Travel, Then You Must Think Of God As The Whole Page On Which The Line Is Drawn.

Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.

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

One Of The Most Cowardly Things Ordinary People Do Is To Shut Their Eyes To Facts.

Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.

The Human Spirit Will Not Even Begin To Try To Surrender Self-will As Long As All Seems To Be Well With It. Now Error And Sin Both Have This Property, That The Deeper They Are The Less Their Victim Suspects Their Existence; They Are Masked Evil. Pain Is Unmasked, Unmistakable Evil; Every Man Knows That Something Is Wrong When He Is Being Hurt.

There Is No Use In Talking As If Forgiveness Were Easy. For We Find That The Work Of Forgiveness Has To Be Done Over And Over Again.

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

Am I Lost Or Just Less Found?

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

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

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?

I Can Answer That Only By Hearsay, Returned The Guide, For Pain Is A Secret Which He Has Shared With Your Race And Not With Mine; And You Would Find It As Hard To Explain Suffering To Me As I Would Find It To Reveal To You The Secrets Of The Mountain People. But Those Who Know Best Say This, That Any Liberal Man Would Choose The Pain Of This Desire, Even For Ever, Rather Than The Peace Of Feeling It No Longer; And That Though The Best Thing Is To Have, The Next Best Is To Want, And The Worst Of All Is Not To Want.

Aslan: You Doubt Your Value. Don't Run From Who You Are.

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.

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

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?)

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.

It Costs God Nothing, So Far As We Know, To Create Nice Things: But To Convert Rebellious Wills Cost Him Crucifixion.

Crucifixion Of Christ

Our Temptation Is To Look Eagerly For The Minimum That Will Be Accepted. We Are In Fact Very Like Honest But Reluctant Taxpayers.

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

The Purpose Of All Opprobrious Language Is, Not To Describe, But To Hurt - Even When, Like Hamlet, We Make Only The Shadow-passes Of A Soliloquised Combat. We Call The Enemy Not What We Think He Is But What We Think He Would Least Like To Be Called.

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

Well, Whatever They Say, You Don't Feel Like Ghosts.

Your Real, New Self (which Is Christ's And Also Yours, And Yours Just Because It Is His) Will Not Come As Long As You Are Looking For It. It Will Come When You Are Looking For Him.

The First Fact In The History Of Christendom Is A Number Of People Who Say They Have Seen The Resurrection.

I Am Struck Here By The Curious Mixture Of Justice And Injustice In Our Lives. We Are Blamed For Our Real Faults But Usually Not On The Right Occasions.

Faith In Christ Is The Only Thing To Save You From Despair.

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

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

To Walk Out Of His Will Is To Walk Into Nowhere.

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

Hail Lord, ...loose My Chains.

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.

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

Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.

We Are...a Divine Work Of Art, Something That God Is Making...something With Which He Will Not Be Satisfied Until It Has A Certain Character.

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.

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.

We Do Know That No Person Can Be Saved Except Through Christ. We Do Not Know That Only Those Who Know Him Can Be Saved By Him.

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

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

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

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.

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

Now That I Am A Christian I Do Have Moods In Which The Whole Thing Looks Improbable: But When I Was An Atheist I Had Moods In Which Christianity Looked Terribly Probable.

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

The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

You Thought You Were Being Made Into A Decent Little Cottage But He Is Building A Palace. He Intends To Come & Live In It Himself

Good Beats Upon The Damned Incessantly As Sound Waves Beat On The Ears Of The Deaf, But They Cannot Receive It. Their Fists Are Clenched, Their Teeth Are Clenched, Their Eyes Fast Shut. First They Will Not, In The End They Cannot, Open Their Hands For Gifts, Or Their Mouth For Food, Or Their Eyes To See.

Monarchy Can Easily Be "debunked," But Watch The Faces, Mark Well The Debunkers. These Are The Men Whose Taproot In Eden Has Been Cut: Whom No Rumour Of The Polyphony, The Dance, Can Reach - Men To Whom Pebbles Laid In A Row Are More Beautiful Than An Arch. Where Men Are Forbidden To Honour A King They Honour Millionaires, Athletes Or Film Stars Instead: For Spiritual Nature, Like Bodily Nature, Will Be Served; Deny It Food And It Will Gobble Poison.

Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

It's Always Winter But It's Never Christmas.

Naturally, Since I Myself Am A Writer, I Do Not Wish The Ordinary Reader To Read No Modern Books. But If He Must Read Only The New Or Only The Old, I Would Advise Him To Read The Old.

You Cannot Love A Fellow Creature Fully Till You Love God.

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

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

We Make Men Without Chests And Expect From Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst.

Though Under Earth, And Throneless Now I Be Yet While I Lived All Earth Was Under Me.

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.

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You....hand Over The Whole Natural Self, All The Desires Which You Think Innocent As Well As The Ones You Think Wicked- The Whole Outfit. I Will Give You A New Self Instead. In Fact, I Will Give You Myself: My Own Will Shall Become Yours.

One Can Regard The Moral Law As An Illusion, And So Cut Himself Off From The Common Ground Of Humanity.

Fancy Sleeping On Air. I Wonder If Anyone's Done It Before. I Don't Suppose They Have. Oh, Bother—-scrubb Probably Has!

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai.

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

Novelty May Fix Our Attention Not Even On The Service But On The Celebrant. You Know What I Mean. Try As One May To Exclude It, The Question "what On Earth Is He Up To Now?" Will Intrude. It Lays One's Devotion Waste. There Is Really Some Excuse For The Man Who Said, "i Wish They'd Remember That The Charge To Peter Was Feed My Sheep; Not Try Experiments On My Rats, Or Even, Teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks.

The Christian "doctrines" Are Translations Into Our Concepts And Ideas Of That Which God Has Already Expressed In Language More Adequate, Namely The Actual Incarnation, Crucifixion, And Resurrection

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

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

The Hard Sayings Of Our Lord Are Wholesome To Those Only Who Find Them Hard.

The Way For A Person To Develop A Style Is (a) To Know Exactly What He Wants To Say, And (b) To Be Sure He Is Saying Exactly That.

Sainthood Lies In The Habit Of Referring The Smallest Actions To God.

They Call Him Aslan In That Place," Said Eustace. "what A Curious Name!" "not Half So Curious As Himself," Said Eustace Solemnly.

Grief Is Like A Long Valley, A Winding Valley Where Any Bend May Reveal A Totally New Landscape.

You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

Friendship Is...the Sort Of Love One Can Imagine Between Angels.

If You Thirst You May Drink.

Have Fun, Even If It’s Not The Same Kind Of Fun Everyone Else Is Having.

When We Want To Be Something Other Than The Thing That God Wants Us To Be, We Must Be Wanting What, In Fact, Will Not Make Us Happy...whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want. Once More, We Are Embarrassed By The Intolerable Compliment, By Too Much Love, Not Too Little.

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.

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.

I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer.

It's So Much Easier To Pray For A Bore Than To Go And See One.

Everywhere, Except In Theology, There Has Been A Vigorous Growth Of Skepticism About Skepticism Itself.

By The Very Act Of Arguing, You Awake The Patient's Reason; And Once It Is Awake, Who Can Foresee The Result?

The Truth Is, Of Course, That What One Regards As Interruptions Are Precisely One's Life.

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

The Life-force Is A Sort Of Tame God. You Can Switch It On When You Want, But It Will Not Bother You. All The Thrills Of Religion And None Of The Cost. Is The Life-force The Greatest Achievement Of Wishful Thinking The World Has Yet Seen?

No Good Poem, However Confessional It May Be, Is Just A Self-expression. Who On Earth Would Claim That The Pearl Expresses The Oyster?

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

Child,' Said The Lion, 'i Am Telling You Your Story, Not Hers. No One Is Told Any Story But Their Own.

Write About What Really Interests You, Whether It Is Real Things Or Imaginary Things, And Nothing Else. (notice This Means That If You Are Interested Only In Writing You Will Never Be A Writer, Because You Will Have Nothing To Write About...)

The Grave And The Image Are Equally Links With The Irrecoverable And Symbols For The Unimaginable.

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.

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

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.

I Am Often, I Believe, Praying For Others When I Should Be Doing Things For Them. It's So Much Easier To Pray For A Bore Than To Go And See Him.

Above All, Do Not Attempt To Use Science (i Mean, The Real Sciences) As A Defence Against Christianity. They Will Positively Encourage Him To Think About Realities He Can’t Touch And See.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear. I Am Not Afraid, But The Sensation Is Like Being Afraid. The Same Fluttering In The Stomach, The Same Restlessness, The Yawning. I Keep On Swallowing. 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. Or Perhaps, Hard To Want To Take It In. It Is So Uninteresting. Yet I Want The Others To Be About Me. I Dread The Moments When The House Is Empty. If Only They Would Talk To One Another And Not To Me.

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

Spiteful Words Can Hurt Your Feelings But Silence Breaks Your Heart.

The Universe Rings True Whenever You Fairly Test It.

We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains: It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World....no Doubt Pain As God's Megaphone Is A Terrible Instrument; It May Lead To Final And Unrepented Rebellion. But It Gives The Only Opportunity The Bad Man Can Have For Amendment. It Removes The Veil; It Plants The Flag Of Truth Within The Fortress Of The Rebel Soul.

Grief ... Gives Life A Permanently Provisional Feeling. It Doesn't Seem Worth Starting Anything. I Can't Settle Down. I Yawn, I Fidget, I Smoke Too Much. Up Till This I Always Had Too Little Time. Now There Is Nothing But Time. Almost Pure Time, Empty Successiveness.

The Psalmists In Telling Everyone To Praise God Are Doing What All Men Do When They Speak Of What They Care About.

Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

The Story Does What No Theorem Can Quite Do. It May Not Be "like Real Life" In The Superficial Sense: But It Sets Before Us An Image Of What Reality May Well Be Like At Some More Central Region.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law: And Without Good Men You Cannot Have A Good Society.

Of All Tyrannies A Tyranny Sincerely Exercised For The Good Of Its Victims May Be The Most Oppressive.

Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.

Morality, Like Numinous Awe, Is A Jump; In It, Man Goes Beyond Anything That Can Be 'given' In The Facts Of Experience.

God Doesn't Want Something From Us. He Simply Wants Us.

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work.

Holy Places Are Dark Places. It Is Life And Strength, Not Knowledge And Words, That We Get In Them. Holy Wisdom Is Not Clear And Thin Like Water, But Thick And Dark Like Blood.

I Mean, The More A Man Was In The Devil's Power, The Less He Would Be Aware Of It, On The Principle That A Man Is Still Fairly Sober As Long As He Knows He's Drunk.

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe A Price Worth Paying For Free Will...then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

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

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

And He Writhed Inside At What Seemed The Cruelty And Unfairness Of The Demand. He Had Not Yet Learned That If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

And The Whole Forest Would Give Itself Up To Jollification For Weeks On End.

The Christian View Is That Men Were Created To Be In A Certain Relationship To God (if We Are In That Relation To Him, The Right Relation To One Another Will Follow Inevitably).

I Desired Dragons With A Profound Desire.

Christ, Who Said To The Disciples, 'you Have Not Chosen Me, But I Have Chosen You,' Can Truly Say To Every Group Of Christian Friends, 'you Have Not Chosen One Another But I Have Chosen You For One Another.'

A Man Can't Be Always Defending The Truth; There Must Be A Time To Feed On It.

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

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

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.

What The Soul Cries Out For Is The Resurrection Of The Senses. Even In This Life, Matter Would Be Nothing To Us If It Were Not The Source Of Sensations.

There Are A Dozen Views About Everything Until You Know The Answer. Then There's Never More Than One.

I Think That If God Forgives Us We Must Forgive Ourselves. Otherwise, It Is Almost Like Setting Up Ourselves As A Higher Tribunal Than Him.

The Promise, Made When I Am In Love And Because 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 Promise Must Be About Things That I Can Do, About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling In A Certain Way. He Might As Well Promise To Never Have A Headache Or Always To Feel Hungry.

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.

The Cross Comes Before The Crown And Tomorrow Is A Monday Morning!

Hope Is One Of The Theological Virtues. This Means That A Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not (as Some Modern People Think) A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do. It Does Not Mean That We Are To Leave The Present World As It Is. If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Just Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

No Man Who Values Originality Will Ever Be Original. But Try To Tell The Truth As You See It, Try To Do Any Bit Of Work As Well As It Can Be Done For The Work's Sake, And What Men Call Originality Will Come Unsought.

That Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporal Sufferring, "no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It" Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory.

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

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

The Poison Was Brewed In These West Lands But It Has Spat Itself Everywhere By Now. However Far You Went You Would Find The Machines, The Crowded Cities, The Empty Thrones, The False Writings, The Barren Beds: Men Maddened With False Promises And Soured With True Miseries, Worshipping The Iron Works Of Their Own Hands, Cut Off From Earth Their Mother And From The Father In Heaven. You Might Go East So Far The East Became West And You Returned To Britain Across The Great Ocean, But Even So You Would Not Have Come Out Anywhere Into The Light. The Shadow Of One Dark Wing Is Over All Tellus.

The Real Trouble Is That 'kindness' Is A Quality Fatally Easy To Attribute To Ourselves On Quite Inadequate Grounds. Everyone Feels Benevolent If Nothing Happens To Be Annoying Him At The Moment. Thus A Man Easily Comes To Console Himself For All His Other Vices By A Conviction That 'his Heart's In The Right Place' And 'he Wouldn't Hurt A Fly,' Though In Fact He Has Never Made The Slightest Sacrifice For A Fellow Creature. We Think We Are Kind When We Are Only Happy: It Is Not So Easy, On The Same Grounds, To Imagine Oneself Temperate, Chaste, Or Humble.

And In Truth (as I Now See) I Had The Wish To Put Off My Journey As Long As I Could. Not For Any Peril Or Labour It Might Cost; But Because I Could See Nothing In The Whole World For Me To Do Once It Was Accomplished. As Long As This Act Lay Before Me, There Was, As It Were, Some Barrier Between Me And The Dead Desert Which The Rest Of My Life Must Be.

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 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.

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.

Prayer Is Either A Sheer Illusion Or A Personal Contact Between Embryonic, Incomplete Persons (ourselves) And The Utterly Concrete Person.

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.

Joy Bursts In Our Lives When We Go About Doing The Good At Hand And Not Trying To Manipulate Things And Times To Achieve Joy.

First Be Sure That You Know Exactly What You Want To Say. Then Be Sure You Have Said Exactly That.

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.

Lucy Went First, Biting Her Lip And Trying Not To Say All The Things She Thought Of Saying To Susan. But She Forgot Them When She Fixed Her Eyes On Aslan.

Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

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

We Know We Are Sinners, It Does Not Follow That We Are Saved.

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.

And A Charge Of Lying Against Someone Whom You Have Always Found Truthful Is A Very Serious Thing; A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

The Point Is That For Our Ancestors, The Universe Was A Picture; For Modern Physics It Is A Story.

Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.

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