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

-C. S. Lewis

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The First Thing To

C. S. Lewis

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

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Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

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

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

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.

There Are No Ordinary People.. It Is Immortals Whom We Joke With, Work With, Marry, Snub, And Exploit.

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.

Quarrelling Means Trying To Show That The Other Man Is In The Wrong. (and) There Is No Sense In Trying To Do That Unless You And He Had Some Sort Of Agreement As To What Righ And Wrong Are.

Good And Evil Increase At Compound Interest. That's Why The Little Decisions We Make Every Day Are Of Infinite Importance.

Decisions We Make

I Do Not Doubt That If The Paradisal Man Could Now Appear Among Us, We Should Regard Him As An Utter Savage, A Creature To Be Exploited Or, At Best, Patronised. Only One Or Two, And Those The Holiest Among Us, Would Glance A Second Time At The Naked, Shaggy-bearded, Slow Spoken Creature: But They, After A Few Minutes, Would Fall At His Feet.

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

Praise Is The Mode Of Love Which Always Has Some Element Of Joy In It.

The More We Let God Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become - Because He Made Us. He Invented Us. He Invented All The Different People That You And I Were Intended To Be. . .it Is When I Turn To Christ, When I Give Up Myself To His Personality, That I First Begin To Have A Real Personality Of My Own.

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

The Christian Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us.

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

The Whole Journey Was Odd And Dream-like -- The Roaring Stream, The Wet Grey Grass, The Glimmering Cliffs Which They Were Approaching, And Always The Glorious, Silently Pacing Beast Ahead.

The First Action To Be Taken Is To Pull Ourselves Together. If We Are Going To Be Destroyed By An Atomic Bomb, Let That Bomb, When It Comes, Find Us Doing Sensible And Human Things -- Praying, Working, Teaching, Reading, Listening To Music, Bathing The Children, Playing Tennis, Chatting To Our Friends Over A Pint And A Game Of Darts -- Not Huddled Together Like Frightened Sheep And Thinking About Bombs.

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

We Are What We Believe We Are.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

As For Wrinkles--pshaw! Why Shouldn't We Have Wrinkles? Honorable Insignia Of Long Service In This Warfare.

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.

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

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.

Watchin' And Listenin' Is The Thing At Present; Not Talking.

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.

A Sick Society Must Think Much About Politics, As A Sick Man Must Think Much About His Digestion.

We Shall Draw Nearer To God, Not By Trying To Avoid The Sufferings Inherent In All Loves, But By Accepting Them And Offering Them To Him; Throwing Away All Defensive Armour. If Our Hearts Need To Be Broken, And If He Chooses This As The Way In Which They Should Break, So Be It.

The Change Which The Writing Wrought In Me (and Of Which I Did Not Write) Was Only A Beginning; Only To Prepare Me For The Gods' Surgery. They Used My Own Pen To Probe My Wound.

Mortal Lovers Must Not Try To Remain At The First Step; For Lasting Passion Is The Dream Of A Harlot And From It We Wake In Despair.

Many People Think Their Prayers Are Never Answered Because It Is The Answered Ones They Forget.

In My Experience, It Is Affection That Creates This Taste, Teaching Us First To Notice, Then To Endure, Then To Smile At, Then To Enjoy, And Finally To Appreciate The People Who 'happen To Be There.' Made For Us? Thank God, No. They Are Themselves, Odder Than You Could Have Believed And Worth Far More Than We Guessed.

Those Who Are Enjoying Something, Or Suffering Something, Together, Are Companions. Those Who Enjoy Or Suffer One Another, Are Not.

Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Even When No One Is Watching.

Many A Man, Brought Up In The Glib Profession Of Some Shallow Form Of Christianity, Who Comes Through Reading Astronomy To Realize For The First Time How Majestically Indifferent Most Reality Is To Man, And Who Perhaps Abandons His Religion On That Account, May At That Moment Be Having His First Genuinely Religious Experience.

Much Of The Modern Resistance To Chastity Comes From Men's Belief That They 'own' Their Bodies—those Vast And Perilous Estates, Pulsating With The Energy That Made The Worlds, In Which They Find Themselves Without Their Consent And From Which They Are Ejected At The Pleasure Of Another!

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

But Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery And Already She Begins To Know It. All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

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.

Gone! And You And I Quite Crestfallen. It’s Always Like That, You Can’t Keep Him; It’s Not As If He Were A Tame Lion.

We Are Not Meant To Be Perpetually Solemn: We Must Play.

A Faith In Culture Is As Bad As A Faith In Religion; Both Expressions Imply A Turning Away From Those Very Things Which Culture And Religion Are About. Culture As A Collective Name For Certain Very Valuable Activities Is A Permissible Word; But Culture Hypostatized, Set Up On Its Own, Made Into A Faith, A Cause, A Banner, A Platform, Is Unendurable. For None Of The Activities In Question Cares A Straw For That Faith Or Cause. It Is Like A Return To Early Semitic Religion Where Names Themselves Were Regarded As Powers.

In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.

...if All We Mean By Our Love Is A Craving To Be Loved, We Are In A Very Deplorable State.

Far Overhead From Beyond The Veil Of Blue Sky Which Hid Them The Stars Sang Again; A Pure, Cold, Difficult Music. Then There Came A Swift Flash Like Fire (but It Burnt Nobody) Either From The Sky Or From The Lion Itself, And Every Drop Of Blood Tingled In The Children's Bodies, And The Deepest, Wildest Voice They Had Ever Heard Was Saying: "narnia, Narnia, Narnia, Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

We Sit Down Before The Picture In Order To Have Something Done To Us, Not That We May Do Things With It. The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way (there Is No Good Asking First Whether The Work Before You Deserves Such A Surrender, For Until You Have Surrendered You Cannot Possibly Find Out.

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.

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.

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

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.

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

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

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers. If You Are Thinking Of Becoming A Christian, I Warn You You Are Embarking On Something Which Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

The Task Of The Modern Educator Is Not To Cut Down Jungles, But To Irrigate Deserts.

If A Thing Is Free To Be Good It Is Also Free To Be Bad. And Free Will Is What Has Made Evil Possible. Why, Then, Did God Give Them Free Will? Because Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Is Also The Only Thing That Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

It Is Not Your Business To Succeed, But To Do Right. When You Have Done So The Rest Lies With God.

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

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.

Stop It," Spluttered Eustace, "go Away. Put That Thing Away. It's Not Safe. Stop It, I Say. I'll Tell Caspian. I'll Have You Muzzled And Tied Up." "why Do You Not Draw Your Own Sword, Poltroon!" Cheeped The Mouse. "draw And Fight Or I'll Beat You Black And Blue With The Flat." "i Haven't Got One," Said Eustace. "i'm A Pacifist. I Don't Believe In Fighting." "do I Understand," Said Reepicheep, Withdrawing His Sword For A Moment And Speaking Very Sternly, "that You Do Not Intend To Give Me Satisfaction?

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

We Do Not Come To God As Bad People Trying To Become Good People; We Come As Rebels To Lay Down Our Arms.

He Who Has Not Forgiven An Enemy Has Never Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

Will You Come With Me To The Mountains? It Will Hurt At First, Until Your Feet Are Hardened. Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?

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

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

Learning Experience

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

When There Came A Sound That I'd Never Heard The Like Of In All My Born Days. Eh, I Won't Forget That. The Whole Air Was Full Of It, Loud As Thunder But Far Longer, Cool And Sweet As Music Over Water But Strong Enough To Shake The Woods. And I Said To Myself, 'if That's Not The Horn, Call Me A Rabbit.

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.

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

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

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.

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.

You Can't Go Back And Change The Beginning, But You Can Start Where You Are And Change The Ending.

It Would Seem That Our Lord Finds Our Desires Not Too Strong, But Too Weak.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

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.

In Reading Chesterton, As In Reading Macdonald, I Did Not Know What I Was Letting Myself In For. A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading. There Are Traps Everywhere — "bibles Laid Open, Millions Of Surprises," As Herbert Says, "fine Nets And Stratagems." God Is, If I May Say It, Very Unscrupulous.

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.

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.

I Have Swallowed Up Girls And Boys, Women And Men, Kings And Emperors, Cities And Realms," Said The Lion. It Didn't Say This As If It Were Boasting, Nor As If It Were Sorry, Nor As If It Were Angry. It Just Said It.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

He Liked Books If They Were Books Of Information And Had Pictures Of Grain Elevators Or Of Fat Foreign Children Doing Exercises In Model Schools.

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

That Is Why Christians Are Told Not To Judge. We See Only The Results Which A Man's Choices Make Out Of His Raw Material. But God Does Not Judge Him On The Raw Material At All, But On What He Has Done With It.

If Each Side Had Been Frankly Contending For Its Own Real Wish, They Would All Have Kept Within The Bounds Of Reason And Courtesy; But Just Because The Contention Is Reversed And Each Side Is Fighting The Other Side’s Battle, All The Bitterness Which Really Flows From Thwarted Self-righteousness And Obstinacy And From The Accumulated Grudges Of The Last Ten Years Is Concealed From Them By The Nominal Or Official "unselfishness" Of What They Are Doing Or, At Least, Held To Be Excused By It.

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

The Very Power Of [textbook Writers] Depends On The Fact That They Are Dealing With A Boy: A Boy Who Thinks He Is ‘doing’ His ‘english Prep’ And Has No Notion That Ethics, Theology, And Politics Are All At Stake. It Is Not A Theory They Put Into His Mind, But An Assumption, Which Ten Years Hence, Its Origin Forgotten And Its Presence Unconscious, Will Condition Him To Take One Side In A Controversy Which He Has Never Recognized As A Controversy At All.

Either The Day Must Come When Joy Prevails And All The Makers Of Misery Are No Longer Able To Infect It, Or Else, For Ever And Ever, The Makers Of Misery Can Destroy In Others The Happiness They Reject For Themselves.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

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

Telling Us To Obey Instinct Is Like Telling Us To Obey 'people.' People Say Different Things: So Do Instincts. Our Instincts Are At War... Each Instinct, If You Listen To It, Will Claim To Be Gratified At The Expense Of The Rest.

If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.

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.

But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.

A Voice Had Begun To Sing. It Was Very Far Away And Digory Found It Hard To Decide From What Direction It Was Coming. Sometimes It Seemed To Come From All Directions At Once. Sometimes He Almost Thought It Was Coming Out Of The Earth Beneath Them. Its Lower Notes Were Deep Enough To Be The Voice Of The Earth Herself. There Were No Words. It Was Hardly A Tune. But It Was Beyond Comparison, The Most Beautiful Sound He Had Ever Heard.

The Devil Loves 'curing' A Small Fault By Giving You A Great One.

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

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.

If There's Anyone Who Can Appear Before Aslan Without Their Knees Knocking, They're Either Braver Than Most, Or Else Just Silly.

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

One Of The Dangers Of Having A Lot Of Money Is That You May Be Quite Satisfied With The Kinds Of Happiness Money Can Give And So Fail To Realize Your Need For God. If Everything Seems To Come Simply By Signing Checks, You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

...this New Idea Of Cure Instead Of Punishment, So Humane In Seeming, Had In Fact Deprived The Criminal Of All Rights And By Taking Away The Name Punishment Made The Thing Infinite.

I Suggest To You That It Is Because God Loves Us That He Gives Us The Gift Of Suffering. Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World. You See, We Are Like Blocks Of Stone Out Of Which The Sculptor Carves The Forms Of Men. The Blows Of His Chisel, Which Hurt Us So Much Are What Make Us Perfect.

It's All Love Or Sex These Days. Friendship Is Almost As Quaint And Outdated A Notion As Chastity. Soon Friends Will Be Like The Elves And The Pixies - Fabulous Mythical Creatures From A Distant Past.

When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

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.

If Minds Are Wholly Dependent On Brains And Brains On Biochemistry, And Biochemistry (in The Long Run) On The Meaningless Flux Of The Atoms, I Cannot Understand How The Thought Of Those Minds Should Have Any More Significance Than The Sound Of The Wind In The Trees.

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".

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

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.

The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.

From The Moment A Creature Becomes Aware Of God As God And Of Itself As Self, The Terrible Alternative Of Choosing God Or Self For The Centre Is Opened To It.

The Very Lack Of Evidence Is Thus Treated As Evidence; The Absence Of Smoke Proves That The Fire Is Very Carefully Hidden...a Belief In Invisible Cats Cannot Be Logically Disproved Although It Does Tell Us A Good Deal About Those Who Hold It.

Let Me Make It Quite Clear That When Christians Say The Christ-life Is In Them, They Do Not Mean Simply Something Mental Or Moral. When They Speak Of Being "in Christ" Or Of Christ Being "in Them", This Is Not Simply A Way Of Saying That They Are Thinking About Christ Or Copying Him. They Mean That Christ Is Actually Operating Through Them; That The Whole Mass Of Christians Are The Physical Organism Through Which Christ Acts--that We Are His Fingers And Muscles, The Cells Of His Body.

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

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than He Is Of Any Other Slacker.

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.

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

All Joy... Emphasizes Our Pilgrim Status; Always Reminds, Beckons, Awakens Desire. Our Best Havings Are Wantings.

There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.

Someone You Love

Enemy-occupied Territory - That Is What This World Is.

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.

The Most Deeply Compelled Action Is Also The Freest Action. By That I Mean, No Part Of You Is Outside The Action.

I Have At Last Come To The End Of The Faerie Queene: And Though I Say "at Last", I Almost Wish He Had Lived To Write Six Books More As He Had Hoped To Do — So Much Have I Enjoyed It.

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

The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

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

I Am A Product Of Long Corridors, Empty Sunlit Rooms, Upstairs Indoor Silences, Attics Explored In Solitude, Distant Noises Of Gurgling Cisterns And Pipes, And The Noise Of Wind Under The Tiles. Also, Of Endless Books.

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.

Which Of The Religions Of The World Gives To Its Followers The Greatest Happiness? While It Lasts, The Religion Of Worshiping Oneself Is Best.

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

Screwtape Letters

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.

The Christian Life Is Simply A Process Of Having Your Natural Self Changed Into A Christ Self, And That This Process Goes On Very Far Inside. One's Most Private Wishes, One's Point Of View, Are The Things That Have To Be Changed.

What You See And What You Hear Depends A Great Deal On Where You Are Standing. It Also Depends On What Sort Of Person You Are.

According To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride.

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

The Process Of Growing Up Is To Be Valued For What We Gain, Not For What We Lose.

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege, Of Individuality.

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.

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

Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

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.

I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.

We Have Not, In Fact, Proved That Science Excludes Miracles: We Have Only Proved That The Question Of Miracles, Like Innumerable Other Questions, Excludes Laboratory Treatment.

The Future Is, Of All Things, The Thing Least Like Eternity. It Is The Most Temporal Part Of Time--for The Past Is Frozen And No Longer Flows, And The Present Is All Lit Up With Eternal Rays.

Think Of A Country Where People Were Admired For Running Away In Battle, Or Where A Man Felt Proud Of Double-crossing All The People Who Had Been Kindest To Him. You Might Just As Well Try To Imagine A Country Where Two And Two Made Five.

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

No Doubt Those Who Really Founded Modern Science Were Usually Those Whose Love Of Truth Exceeded Their Love Of Power.

Hatred Obscures All Distinctions.

Is It Easy To Love God' Asks An Old Author. 'it Is Easy,' He Replies, 'to Those Who Do It.' I Have Included Two Graces Under The Word Charity. But God Can Give A Third. He Can Awake In Man, Towards Himself, A Supernatural Appreciative Love. This Is Of All Gifts The Most To Be Desired. Here, Not In Our Natural Loves, Nor Even In Ethics, Lies The True Centre Of All Human And Angelic Life. With This All Things Are Possible.

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

And I Say Also This. I Do Not Think The Forest Would Be So Bright, Nor The Water So Warm, Nor Love So Sweet, If There Were No Danger In The Lakes.

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

Total War Is The Most Humane In The Long Run.

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

The Worldly Man Treats Certain People Kindly Because He 'likes' Them: The Christian, Trying To Treat Every One Kindly, Finds Him Liking More And More People As He Goes On - Including People He Could Not Even Have Imagined Himself Liking At The Beginning.

The Real Problem Is Not Why Some Pious, Humble, Believing People Suffer, But Why Some Do Not.

There Is One Vice Of Which No Man In The World Is Free; Which Every One In The World Loathes When He Sees It In Someone Else; And Of Which Hardly Any People, Except Christians, Ever Imagine That They Are Guilty Themselves. […] There Is No Fault Which Makes A Man More Unpopular, And No Fault Which We Are More Unconscious Of In Ourselves.[…]the Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility.

Oh God, God, Why Did You Take Such Trouble To Force This Creature Out Of Its Shell If It Is Now Doomed To Crawl Back -- To Be Sucked Back -- Into It?

If The Whole Universe Has No Meaning, We Should Never Have Found Out That It Has No Meaning: Just As, If There Were No Light In The Universe And Therefore No Creatures With Eyes, We Should Never Know It Was Dark. Dark Would Be Without Meaning.

No, I Don’t Wish I Knew Heaven Was Like The Picture In My Great Divorce, Because, If We Knew That, We Should Know It Was No Better. The Good Things Even Of This World Are Far Too Good Ever To Be Reached By Imagination. Even The Common Orange, You Know: No One Could Have Imagined It Before He Tasted It. How Much Less Heaven.

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.

What Does Not Satisfy When We Find It, Was Not The Thing We Were Desiring.

Every Contact You Make With Everyone You Meet Will Help Them Or Hinder Them On Their Journey To Heaven.

And There We All Were, As Invisible As You Could Wish To See.

A Pleasure Is Full Grown Only When It Is Remembered.

Hell Begins With A Grumbling Mood, Always Complaining, Always Blaming Others.

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.

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

We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

The Eternal Being, Who Knows Everything And Who Created The Whole Universe, Became Not Only A Man But (before That) A Baby, And Before That A Fetus In A Woman's Body.

Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly. For All That Can Be Shaken Will Be Shaken And Only The Unshakeable Remains.

You Don't Have A Soul. You Are A Soul. You Have A Body.

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

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 Have No Duty To Be Anyone's Friend And No Man In The World Has A Duty To Be Mine. No Claims, No Shadow Of Necessity. Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art, Like The Universe Itself (for God Did Not Need To Create). It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things Which Give Value To Survival.

God, Who Foresaw Your Tribulation, Has Specially Armed You To Go Through It, Not Without Pain But Without Stain.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

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

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

Even The Best Christian That Ever Lived Is Not Acting On His Own Steam--he Is Only Nourishing Or Protecting A Life He Could Never Have Acquired By His Own Efforts.

In Your Life You Meet People. Some You Never Think About Again. Some, You Wonder What Happened To Them. There Are Some That You Wonder If They Ever Think About You. And Then There Are Some That You Wish You Never Have To Think About Again. But You Do.

When He [god] Talks Of Their Losing Their Selves, He Means Only Abandoning The Clamour Of Self-will; Once They Have Done That, He Really Gives Them Back All Their Personality, And Boasts (i Am Afraid, Sincerely) That When They Are Wholly His They Will Be More Themselves Than Ever.

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

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

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

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

Time Is The Very Lens Through Which Ye See - Small And Clear, As Men See Through The Wrong End Of A Telescope - Something That Would Otherwise Be Too Big For Ye To See At All. That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Parts Of Eternal Reality.

The Salvation Of A Single Soul Is More Important Than The Production Or Preservation Of All The Epics And Tragedies In The World.

If One Has To Choose Between Reading The New Books And Reading The Old, One Must Choose The Old: Not Because They Are Necessarily Better But Because They Contain Precisely Those Truths Of Which Our Own Age Is Neglectful.

[something] Does Not Rise To The Dignity Of Error.

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.

Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is. ... We Never Find Out The Strength Of The Evil Impulse Inside Us Until We Try To Fight It: And Christ, Because He Was The Only Man Who Never Yielded To Temptation, Is Also The Only Man Who Knows To The Full What Temptation Means—the Only Complete Realist.

For In Grief Nothing "stays Put." One Keeps On Emerging From A Phase, But It Always Recurs. Round And Round. Everything Repeats. Am I Going In Circles, Or Dare I Hope I Am On A Spiral? But If A Spiral, Am I Going Up Or Down It? How Often -- Will It Be For Always? -- How Often Will The Vast Emptiness Astonish Me Like A Complete Novelty And Make Me Say, "i Never Realized My Loss Till This Moment"? The Same Leg Is Cut Off Time After Time.

Man Approaches God Most Nearly When He Is In One Sense Least Like God. For What Can Be More Unlike Than Fullness And Need, Sovereignty And Humility, Righteousness And Penitence, Limitless Power And A Cry For Help?

What Does Seem To Me Poisonous, What Breeds A Type Of Patriotism That Is Pernicious If It Lasts But Not Likely To Last Long In An Educated Adult, Is The Perfectly Serious Indoctrination Of The Young In Knowably False Or Biased History - The Heroic Legend Drably Disguised As Text-book Fact. With This Creeps In The Tacit Assumption That Other Nations Have Not Equally Their Heroes; Perhaps Even The Belief - Surely It Is Very Bad Biology - That We Can Literally 'inherit' Tradition.

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