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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?)

-C. S. Lewis

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The Guide Sang: The

C. S. Lewis

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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?)

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And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

Precisely Because We Cannot Predict The Moment, We Must Be Ready At All Moments.

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

Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

I Was At This Time Living, Like So Many Atheists Or Antitheists, In A Whirl Of Contradictions. I Maintained That God Did Not Exist. I Was Also Very Angry With God For Not Existing. I Was Equally Angry With Him For Creating A World.

Why Should Your Majesty Think It? My Own Plans Are Made. While I May, I Sail East In Dawn Treader. When She Fails Me, I Row East In My Coracle. When That Sinks, Shall I Paddle East With My Four Paws. Then, When I Can Swim No Longer, If I Have Not Yet Reached Aslan's Country, There Shall I Sink With My Nose To The Sunrise... And Peepiceek Will Be Head Of Talking Mice In Narnia

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.

A Perfect Practice Of Christianity Would, Of Course, Consist In A Perfect Imitation Of The Life Of Christ -- I Mean, In So Far As It Was Applicable In One's Own Particular Circumstance. Not In An Idiotic Sense -- It Doesn't Mean That Every Christian Should Grow A Beard, Or Be A Bachelor, Or Become A Travelling Preacher. It Means That Every Single Act And Feeling, Every Experience, Whether Pleasant Or Unpleasant, Must Be Referred To God.

You Ask ‘for What’ God Wants You. Isn’t The Primary Answer That He Wants You. We’re Not Told That The Lost Sheep Was Sought Out For Anything Except Itself [matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7]. Of Course, He May Have A Special Job For You: And The Certain Job Is That Of Becoming More And More His.

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

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

We Do Not Want To Merely “see” Beauty. We Want To Be United With It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Become Part Of It.

Not That I Am (i Think) In Much Danger Of Ceasing To Believe In God. The Real Danger Is Of Coming To Believe Such Dreadful Things About Him. The Conclusion I Dread Is Not 'so There's No God After All,' But 'so This Is What God's Really Like. Deceive Yourself No Longer.

In The Truest Sense, Christian Pilgrims Have The Best Of Both Worlds. We Have Joy Whenever This World Reminds Us Of The Next, And We Take Solace Whenever It Does Not.

Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.

Pride, On The Other Hand, Is The Mother Of All Sins, And The Original Sin Of Lucifer.... An Instrument Strung, But Preferring To Play Itself Because It Thinks It Knows The Tune Better Than The Musician

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of Love: We Love Wise And Kind And Beautiful People Because We Need Them, But We Love (or Try To Love) Stupid And Disagreeable People Because They Need Us. This Second Kind Is The More Divine Because That Is How God Loves Us: Not Because We Are Lovable But Because He Is Love, Not Because He Needs To Receive But He Delights To Give.

No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

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--

What We Have Been Told Is How We Men Can Be Drawn Into Christ-can Become Part Of That Wonderful Present Which The Young Prince Of The Universe Wants To Offer To His Father-that Present Which Is Himself And Therefore Us In Him. It Is The Only Thing We Were Made For. And There Are Strange, Exciting Hints In The Bible That When We Are Drawn In, A Great Many Other Things In Nature Will Begin To Come Right. The Bad Dream Will Be Over: It Will Be Morning.

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.

Giving To The Poor Is An Essential Part Of Christian Morality.

Jewel,' He Said, 'what Lies Before Us? Horrible Thoughts Arise In My Heart. If We Had Died Before Today We Should Have Been Happy.

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

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.

As The King Governs By His Executive, So Reason In Man Must Rule The Mere Appetites By Means Of The 'spirited Element.'

And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?

A Woman Means By Unselfishness Chiefly Taking Trouble For Others; A Man Means Not Giving Trouble To Others...thus, While The Woman Thinks Of Doing Good Offices And The Man Of Respecting Other People's Rights, Each Sex, Without Any Obvious Unreason, Can And Does Regard The Other As Radically Selfish.

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

The Higher Animals Are In A Sense Drawn Into Man When He Loves Them And Makes Them (as He Does) Much More Nearly Human Than They Would Otherwise Be.

If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing-rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

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

You Can Begin As If Nothing Had Ever Gone Wrong. White As Snow.

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.

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

Children Have One Kind Of Silliness, As You Know, And Grown-ups Have Another Kind.

Devils Are Depicted With Bats' Wings And Good Angels With Birds' Wings, Not Because Anyone Holds That Moral Deterioration Would Be Likely To Turn Feathers Into Membrane, But Because Most Men Like Birds Better Than Bats.

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

The Great Thing With Unhappy Times Is To Take Them Bit By Bit, Hour By Hour, Like An Illness. It Is Seldom The Present, The Exact Present, That Is Unbearable.

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

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.

There Is Something Which Unites Magic And Applied Science (technology) While Separating Them From The "wisdom" Of Earlier Ages. For The Wise Men Of Old, The Cardinal Problem Of Human Life Was How To Conform The Soul To Objective Reality, And The Solution Was Wisdom, Self-discipline , And Virtue. For The Modern, The Cardinal Problem Is How To Conform Reality To The Wishes Of Man, And The Solution Is A Technique.

I Fancy That Most People Who Think At All Have Done A Great Deal Of Their Thinking In The First Fourteen Years.

Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, '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. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.

The Great Thing, If One Can, Is To Stop Regarding All The Unpleasant Things As Interruptions Of One's 'own,' Or 'real' Life. The Truth Is Of Course That What One Calls The Interruptions Are Precisely One's Real Life -- The Life God Is Sending One Day By Day.

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

Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted. And If An Infinitely Wise Being Listens To The Requests Of Finite And Foolish Creatures, Of Course He Will Sometimes Grant And Sometimes Refuse Them.

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

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

And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

At Least He Went On Saying This Till Aslan Had Loaded Him Up With Three Dwarfs, One Dryad, Two Rabbits, And A Hedgehog, That Steadied Him A Bit.

I Find That When I Think I Am Asking God To Forgive Me I Am Often In Reality. . . Asking Him Not To Forgive Me But To Excuse Me.

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.

Affection Is Responsible For Nine-tenths Of Whatever Solid And Durable Happiness There Is In Our Lives.

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

I Am Only Trying To Call Attention To A Fact; The Fact That This Year, Of This Month, Or, More Likely, This Very Day, We Have Failed To Practice Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

Well, You Know How It Feels If You Begin Hoping For Something That You Want Desperately Badly; You Almost Fight Against The Hope Because It Is Too Good To Be True; You've Been Disappointed So Often Before.

Hoping For Something

They Were Pretty Tired By Now Of Course; But Not What I’d Call Bitterly Tired – Only Slow And Feeling Very Dreamy And Tired As One Does When One Is Coming To The End Of A Long Day In The Open.

Suppose... Suppose We Have Only Dreamed And Made Up These Things Like Sun, Sky, Stars, And Moon, And Aslan Himself. In That Case, It Seems To Me That The Made-up Things Are A Good Deal Better Than The Real Ones. And If This Black Pits Of A Kingdom Is The Best You Can Make, Then It's A Poor World. And We Four Can Make A Dream World To Lick Your Real One Hollow.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable.

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.

Truth And Falsehood Are Opposed; But Truth Is The Norm Not Of Truth Only But Of Falsehood Also.

Truth And Falsehood

Once In Those Very Early Days My Brother Brought Into The Nursery The Lid Of A Biscuit Tin Which He Had Covered With Moss And Garnished With Twigs And Flowers So As To Make It A Toy Garden Or A Toy Forest. That Was The First Beauty I Ever Knew. What The Real Garden Had Failed To Do, The Toy Garden Did. It Made Me Aware Of Nature-not, Indeed, As A Storehouse Of Forms And Colors But As Something Cool, Dewy, Fresh, Exuberant....as Long As I Live My Imagination Of Paradise Will Retain Something Of My Brother's Toy Garden.

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom.

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

Christianity Does Not Want Us To Reduce By One Atom The Hatred We Feel For Cruelty And Treachery. We Ought To Hate Them. Not One Word Of What We Have Said About Them Needs To Be Unsaid. But It Does Want Us To Hate Them In The Same Way In Which We Hate Things In Ourselves: Being Sorry That The Man Should Have Done Such Things, And Hoping, If It Is Anyway Possible, That Somehow, Sometime, Somewhere He Can Be Cured And Made Human Again.

Well,' Said Ransom, 'if It Is A Delusion, It's A Pretty Stubborn One.

If Things Are Real, They're There All The Time.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

The Perfect Church Service Would Be One We Were Almost Unaware Of. Our Attention Would Have Been On God.

A Real Desire To Believe All The Good You Can Of Others And To Make Others As Comfortable As You Can Will Solve Most Of The Problems.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."

We Can Conceive Of A World In Which God Corrected The Results Of Abuse Of Free Will By His Creatures: So That A Wooden Beam Became Soft As Grass When Used As A Weapon... But Such A World Would Be One In Which Wrong Actions Were Impossible, And Therefore, Freedom Of The Will Would Be Void.

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

Christ Did Not Die For Man Because They Were Intrinsically Worth Dying For, But Because He Is Intrinsically Love, And Therefore Loves Infinitely.

We Long For More And God's Promise Is That There Is More Awaiting Us. More To Delight Us Than We Will Ever Exhaust.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'

You Do Not Fail In Obedience Through Lack Of Love, But You Have Lost Love Because You Never Attempted Obedience.

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

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.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

One Is Given Strength To Bear What Happens To One, But Not The 100 And 1 Different Things That Might Happen.

The Idea Which...shuts Out The Second Coming From Our Minds, The Idea Of The World Slowly Ripening To Perfection, Is A Myth, Not A Generalization From Experience.

The Fact That Our Heart Yearns For Something Earth Can't Supply Is Proof That Heaven Must Be Our Home.

To What Will You Look For Help If You Will Not Look To That Which Is Stronger Than Yourself?

There Are No Variations Except For Those Who Know A Norm, And No Subtleties For Those Who Have Not Grasped The Obvious.

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.

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

But In General, Take My Advice, When You Meet Anything That Is Going To Be Human And Isn’t Yet, Or Used To Be Human Once And Isn’t Now, Or Ought To Be Human And Isn’t, You Keep Your Eyes On It And Feel For Your Hatchet.

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.

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

I Never Heard Weeping Like That Before Or After; Not From A Child, Nor A Man Wounded In The Palm, Nor A Tortured Man, Nor A Girl Dragged Off To Slavery From A Taken City. If You Heard The Woman You Most Hate In The World Weep So, You Would Go To Comfort Her. You Would Fight Your Way Through Fire And Spears To Reach Her. And I Knew Who Wept, And What Had Been Done To Her, And Who Had Done It.

Whenever We Find That Our Religious Life Is Making Us Feel That We Are Good - Above All, That We Are Better Than Someone Else - I Think We May Be Sure That We Are Being Acted On, Not By God, But By The Devil.

People Talk As If Grief Were Just A Feeling -- As If It Weren't The Continually Renewed Shock Of Setting Out Again And Again On Familiar Roads And Being Brought Up Short By The Grim Frontier Post That Now Blocks Them.

Nature Never Taught Me That There Exists A God Of Glory And Of Infinite Majesty. I Had To Learn That In Other Ways. But Nature Gave The Word Glory A Meaning For Me. I Still Do Not Know Where Else I Could Have Found One.

Certainly, Lu. Whatever You Like,' Said Peter Unexpectedly. This Was Encouraging, But As Peter Instantly Rolled Round And Went To Sleep Again It Wasn't Much Use.

It Is Because They Have No Oyarsa,' Said One Of The Pupils. It Is Because Everyone Of Them Wants To Be A Little Oyarsa Himself,' Said Augray.

Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery.

Men Propound Mathematical Theorems In Besieged Cities, Conduct Metaphysical Arguments In Condemned Cells, Make Jokes On The Scaffold, Discuss A New Poem While Advancing To The Walls Of Quebec, And Comb Their Hair At Thermopylae. This Is Not Panache; It Is Our Nature.

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

Exception To The Rule

He Produced Mainly Three Results: Hatred, Terror, Adoration.

If Conversion Makes No Improvements In A Man's Outward Actions Then I Think His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

It May Well Be That By Trickery Of Priests Men Have Sometimes Taken A Mortal's Voice For A God's. But It Will Not Work The Other Way. No One Who Hears A God's Voice Takes It For A Man's.

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.

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.

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

[god] Will Not Be Used As A Convenience. Men Or Nations Who Think They Can Revive The Faith In Order To Make A Good Society Might Just As Well Think They Can Use The Stairs Of Heaven As A Shortcut To The Nearest Chemist's Shop.

The Problem Of Reconciling Human Suffering With The Existence Of A God Who Loves, Is Only Insoluble So Long As We Attach A Trivial Meaning To The Word "love."

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.

What One Must Not Do Is To Rule Out The Supernatural As The One Impossible Explanation.

He's Not Safe, But He's Good (referring To Aslan, The Lion, In The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe)

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

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

Thirty Was So Strange For Me. I've Really Had To Come To Terms With The Fact That I Am Now A Walking And Talking Adult.

We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

And There, Right In The Middle Of It, I Find 'forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive Those That Sin Against Us.' There Is No Slightest Suggestion That We Are Offered Forgiveness On Any Other Terms. It Is Made Perfectly Clear That If We Do Not Forgive We Shall Not Be Forgiven.

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

Many Thousands Of People Have Had The Experience Of Finding The First Friend, And It Is None The Less A Wonder; As Great A Wonder (pace The Novelists) As First Love, Or Even Greater.

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

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

We Who Have Been True Readers All Our Life Fully Realize The Enormous Of Our Being Which We Owe To Authors.

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.

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

We Are Not Merely Imperfect Creatures Who Must Be Improved; We Are Rebels Who Must Lay Down Our Arms.

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.

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.

Extraordinary Things Only Happen To Extraordinary People. Maybe It's A Sign That You've Got An Extraordinary Destiny--something Greater Than You Could've Imagined.

Extraordinary Things

In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

The Whole Difficulty Of Understanding Hell Is That The Thing To Be Understood Is So Nearly Nothing.

I Enjoyed My Breakfast This Morning, And I Think That Was A Good Thing And Do Not Think It Was Condemned By God. But I Do Not Think Myself A Good Man For Enjoying It.

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.

Never Exaggerate. Never Say More Than You Really Mean.

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 Return From The Walk, And The Arrival Of Tea, Should Be Exactly Coincident, And Not Later Than A Quarter Past Four.

Who Can Endure A Doctrine Which Would Allow Only Dentists To Say Whether Our Teeth Were Aching, Only Cobblers To Say Whether Our Shoes Hurt Us, And Only Governments To Tell Us Whether We Were Being Well Governed?

Those Who Would Like The God Of Scripture To Be More Purely Ethical, Do Not Know What They Ask.

The Student Is Half Afraid To Meet One Of The Great Philosophers Face To Face. He Feels Himself Inadequate And Thinks He Will Not Understand Him. But If He Only Knew, The Great Man, Just Because Of His Greatness, Is Much More Intelligible Than His Modern Commentator. The Simplest Student Will Be Able To Understand, If Not All, Yet A Very Great Deal Of What Plato Said; But Hardly Anyone Can Understand Some Modern Books On Platonism.

This Is My Password," Said The King As He Drew His Sword. "the Light Is Dawning, The Lie Broken. Now Guard Thee, Miscreant, For I Am Tirian Of Narnia.

And That's Why, Gentleman, If Your Little Girl Doesn't Come Up To Scratch, It Will Be Our Painful Duty To Cut All Your Throats. Merely In A Way Of Business, As You Might Say, And No Offense, I Hope.

When All The Suns And Nebulae Have Passed Away, Each One Of You Will Still Be Alive.

The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.

The Human Mind Is Generally Far More Eager To Praise And Dispraise Than To Describe And Define. It Wants To Make Every Distinction A Distinction Of Value; Hence Those Fatal Critics Who Can Never Point Out The Differing Quality Of Two Poets Without Putting Them In An Order Of Preference As If They Were Candidates For A Prize.

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

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness. We Need Others Physically, Emotionally, And Intellectually. We Need Them If We Are To Know Anything, Even Ourselves.

There Is No Use Saying You Chose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.

The Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility...according To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride. Unchastity, Anger, Greed, Drunkenness, And All That, Are Mere Flea Bites In Comparison: It Was Through Pride That The Devil Became The Devil: Pride Leads To Every Other Vice: It Is The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

We May Give Our Human Loves The Unconditional Allegiance Which We Owe Only To God. They They Become Gods: Then They Become Demons. Then They Will Destroy Us, And Also Destroy Themselves. For Natural Loves That Are Allowed To Become Gods Do Not Remain Loves. They Are Still Called So, But Can Become In Fact Complicated Forms Of Hatred.

I Daren't Come And Drink," Said Jill. Then You Will Die Of Thirst," Said The Lion. Oh Dear!" Said Jill, Coming Another Step Nearer."i Suppose I Must Go And Look For Another Stream Then." There Is No Other Stream," Said The Lion.

On The Back Of Satan's Neck Is A Nail Scarred Footprint.

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons

Most Of Us Are Not Really Approaching The Subject In Order To Find Out What Christianity Says; We Are Approaching It In The Hope Of Finding Support From Christianity For The Views Of Our Own Party.

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.

The Next Best Thing To Being Wise Oneself Is To Live In A Circle Of Those Who Are.

Do You Mean To Say," Asked Caspian, "that You Three Come From A Round World (round Like A Ball) And You've Never Told Me! It's Really Too Bad For You. Because We Have Fairy-tales In Which There Are Round Worlds And I Have Always Loved Them … Have You Ever Been To The Parts Where People Walk About Upside-down?" Edmund Shook His Head. "and It Isn't Like That," He Added. "there's Nothing Particularly Exciting About A Round World When You're There.

I See You Are An Idiot, Whatever Else You May Be.

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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.

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.

We Only Learn To Behave Ourselves In The Presence Of God.

Presence Of God

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.

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

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

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

Isn't It Funny The Way Some Combinations Of Words Can Give You--almost Apart From Their Meaning--a Thrill Like Music?

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

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.

She Did Not Shut It Properly Because She Knew That It Is Very Silly To Shut Oneself Into A Wardrobe, Even If It Is Not A Magic One.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Omnipotence Means Power To Do All That Is Intrinsically Possible, Not To Do The Intrinsically Impossible. You May Attribute Miracles To Him, But Not Nonsense.

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.

Be Sure It Is Not For Nothing That The Landlord Has Knit Our Hearts So Closely To Time And Place – To One Friend Rather Than Another And One Shire More That All The Land.

Notice How We Are Perpetually Surprised At Time. ('how Time Flies! Fancy John Being Grown-up And Married! I Can Hardly Believe It!') In Heavens Name, Why? Unless, Indeed, There Is Something In Us Which Is Not Temporal.

No Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally – And Often Far More – Worth Reading At The Age Of Fifty And Beyond.

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 Only One Way Fit For A Man - Heroism, Or Master-morality, Or Violence. All The Other People In Between Are Ploughing The Sand.

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

It Is A Happy Moment When Our Desire Crosses With The Will Of Heavenly Father.

Love, While Always Forgiving Of Imperfections And Mistakes, Can Never Cease To Will Their Removal.

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.

I'm Not Sure God Wants Us To Be Happy. I Think He Wants Us To Love, And Be Loved. But We Are Like Children, Thinking Our Toys Will Make Us Happy And The Whole World Is Our Nursery. Something Must Drive Us Out Of That Nursery And Into The Lives Of Others, And That Something Is Suffering.

God Has Infinite Attention, Infinite Leisure To Spare For Each One Of Us. He Doesn't Have To Take Us In The Line. You're As Much Alone With Him As If You Were The Only Thing He'd Ever Created.

In Any Fairly Large And Talkative Community Such As A University There Is Always The Danger That Those Who Think Alike Should Gravitate Together Where They Will Henceforth Encounter Opposition Only In The Emasculated Form Of Rumour That The Outsiders Say Thus And Thus. The Absent Are Easily Refuted, Complacent Dogmatism Thrives, And Differences Of Opinion Are Embittered By The Group Hostility. Each Group Hears Not The Best, But The Worst, That The Other Group Can Say.

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

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

Screwtape Letters

There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.

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.

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

No Man Can Be An Exile If He Remembers That All The World Is One City.

I Have Learned Now That While Those Who Speak About One's Miseries Usually Hurt, Those Who Keep Silence Hurt More.

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.

I Want God, Not My Idea Of God.

I Expect You Have Seen Someone Put A A Lighted Match To A Bit Of Newspaper Which Is Propped Up In A Grate Against An Unlit Fire. And For A Second Nothing Seems To Have Happened; And Then You Notice A Tiny Steak Of Flame Creeping Along The Edged Of The Newspaper. It Was Like That Now.

Her Face Was Working And Twitching With Passion, But His Looked Up At The Sky, Still Quiet, Neither Angry Nor Afraid, But A Little Sad.

Evil Can Be Undone, But It Cannot 'develop' Into Good. Time Does Not Heal It. The Spell Must Be Unwound, Bit By Bit, 'with Backward Mutters Of Dissevering Power' - Or Else Not.

The Notion That Everyone Would Like Christianity To Be True, And Therefore All Atheists Are Brave Men Who Have Accepted The Defeat Of All Their Deepest Desires, Is Simply Impudent Nonsense.

Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything. But No, That Is Not Quite Accurate. There Is One Place Where Her Absence Comes Locally Home To Me, And It Is A Place I Can't Avoid. I Mean My Own Body. It Had Such A Different Importance While It Was The Body Of H.'s Lover. Now It's Like An Empty House.

I Believe Buddhism To Be A Simplification Of Hinduism And Islam To Be A Simplification Of Xianity.

There Was Nothing Medieval People Liked Better, Or Did Better, Than Sorting Out And Tidying Up. Of All Our Modern Inventions I Suspect That They Would Most Have Admired The Card Index.

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