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The Knight Is A Man Of Blood And Iron, A Man Familiar With The Sight Of Smashed Faces And The Ragged Stumps Of Lopped-off Limbs; He Is Also A Demure, Almost A Maidenlike, Guest In Hall, A Gentle, Modest, Unobtrusive Man. He Is Not A Compromise Or Happy Mean Between Ferocity And Meekness; He Is Fierce To The Nth And Meek To The Nth.

-C. S. Lewis

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The Knight Is A

C. S. Lewis

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The Knight Is A Man Of Blood And Iron, A Man Familiar With The Sight Of Smashed Faces And The Ragged Stumps Of Lopped-off Limbs; He Is Also A Demure, Almost A Maidenlike, Guest In Hall, A Gentle, Modest, Unobtrusive Man. He Is Not A Compromise Or Happy Mean Between Ferocity And Meekness; He Is Fierce To The Nth And Meek To The Nth.

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It Is In Some Ways More Troublesome To Track And Swat An Evasive Wasp Than To Shoot, At Close Range, A Wild Elephant. But The Elephant Is More Troublesome If You Miss.

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.

Satan Always Sends Error Into The World In Pairs That Are Opposites. His Great Hope Is That You Will Get So Upset About One Of His Errors, That You'll React Into The Opposite One, And He's Got You.

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.

Emerson Said, Do You Love Me? Means Do You See The Same Truth?-or At Least, "do You Care About The Same Truth?

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.

My Argument Against God Was That The Universe Seemed So Cruel And Unjust. But How Had I Got This Idea Of Just And Unjust? A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line. What Was I Comparing This Universe With When I Called It Unjust?

While Friendship Has Been By Far The Chief Source Of My Happiness, Acquaintance Or General Society Has Always Meant Little To Me, And I Cannot Quite Understand Why A Man Should Wish To Know More People Than He Can Make Real Friends Of.

Alas," Said Aslan, Shaking His Head. "it Will. Things Always Work According To Their Nature. She Has Won Her Heart's Desire; She Has Unwearying Strength And Endless Days Like A Goddess. 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.

I Felt In My Bones That This Universe Does Not Explain Itself.

If We Did Not Bring To The Examinations Of Our Instincts A Knowledge Of Their Comparative Dignity We Could Never Learn It From Them.

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.

Something Of God... Flows Into Us From The Blue Of The Sky, The Taste Of Honey, The Delicious Embrace Of Water Whether Cold Or Hot, And Even From Sleep Itself.

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

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

Inner Silence Is For Our Race A Difficult Achievement. There Is A Chattering Part Of The Mind Which Continues, Until It Is Corrected, To Chatter On Even In The Holiest Places.

The More Lucidly We Think, The More We Are Cut Off: The More Deeply We Enter Into Reality, The Less We Can Think.

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

My Own Eyes Are Not Enough For Me; I Will See Through Those Of Others.

We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.

The Man Who Truly And Disinterestedly Enjoys Any One Thing In The World, For Its Own Sake, And Without Caring Two-pence What Other People Say About It, Is By That Very Fact Forewarmed Against Some Of Our Subtlest Modes Of Attack.

If Conversion To Christianity Makes No Improvement In A Man's Outward Actions – If He Continues To Be Just A Snobbish Or Spiteful Or Envious Or Ambitious As He Was Before – Then I Think We Must Suspect That His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Be Set To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

What We Called Love Down There Was Mostly The Craving To Be Loved. In The Main I Loved You For My Own Sake: Because I Needed You...we Shall Have No Need For One Another Now: We Can Begin To Love Truly.

There Is Nothing Like Suspense And Anxiety For Barricading A Human's Mind Against The Enemy. He Wants Men To Be Concerned With What They Do; Our Business Is To Keep Them Thinking About What Will Happen To Them.

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

I Gave Up Christianity At About 14. Came Back To It When Getting On For 30. Not An Emotional Conversion; Almost Purely Philosophical. I Didn't Want To. I'm Not In The Least A Religious Type. I Want To Be Let Alone, To Feel I'm My Own Master; But Since The Facts Seemed To Be Just The Opposite, I Had To Give In.

There Is No Other Day. All Days Are Present Now. This Moment Contains All Moments.

If Anyone Would Like To Acquire Humility, The First Step Is To Realize One Is Proud. Nothing Can Be Done Before It.

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

If We Only Have The Will To Walk, Then God Is Pleased With Our Stumbles.

If There Ever Was A Time That Nothing Existed, Then Nothing Would Exist Now

He Has Room For People With Very Little Sense, But He Wants Everyone To Use What Sense They Have.

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

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.

You Find Out The Strength Of A Wind By Trying To Walk Against It, Not By Lying Down.

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

What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

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

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

[the Decay Of Logic Results From An] Untroubled Assumption That The Particular Is Real And The Universal Is Not.

It Is No Disparagement To The Garden To Say It Will Not Fence And Weed Itself, Nor Prune Its Own Fruit Trees, Nor Roll And Cut Its Own Lawns...it Will Remain A Garden Only If Someone Does All These Things To It...if You Want To See The Difference Between [the Garden's] Contribution And The Gardener's, Put The Commonest Weed It Grows Side By Side With His Hoes Rakes, Shears, And A Packet Of Weed Killer; You Have Put Beauty, Energy, And Fecundity Beside Dead, Steril Things. Just So, Our 'decency And Common Sense' Show Grey And Deathlike Beside The Geniality Of Love.

Now The Trouble About Trying To Make Yourself Stupider Than You Really Are Is That You Very Often Succeed.

Man Does Not Have A Soul. He Is A Soul. He Has A Body.

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 Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.

The Full Acting Out Of The Self's Surrender To God Therefore Demands Pain: This Action, To Be Perfect, Must Be Done From The Pure Will To Obey, In The Absence, Or In The Teeth, Of Inclination

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.

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

Giant Wimbleweather Burst Into One Of Those Not Very Intelligent Laughs To Which The Nicer Sort Of Giants Are So Liable. He Checked Himself At Once And Looked As Grace As A Turnip By The Time Reepicheep Discovered Where The Noise Came From.

I Would Prefer To Battle The 'i'm Special' Feeling Not By The Thought, 'i'm No More Special Than Anyone Else,' By By The Feeling, 'everyone Is As Special As Me.'

That's The Worst Of Girls," Said Edmund To Peter And The Dwarf. "they Never Can Carry A Map In Their Heads." "that's Because Our Heads Have Something Inside Them," Said Lucy.

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

We Forgive, We Mortify Our Resentment; A Week Later Some Chain Of Thought Carries Us Back To The Original Offence And We Discover The Old Resentment Blazing Away As If Nothing Had Been Done About It At All. We Need To Forgive Our Brother Seventy Times Seven Not Only For 490 Offences But For One Offence.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues. There Is No Getting Away From It; The Old Christian Rule Is, "either Marriage, With Completely Faithfulness To Your Partner, Or Else Total Abstinence."

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.

What We Call Man's Power Over Nature Turns Out To Be A Power Exercised By Some Men Over Other Men With Nature As Its Instrument.

Our Father Refreshes Us On The Journey With Some Pleasant Inns, But Will Not Encourage Us To Mistake Them For Home.

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.

To Excuse What Can Really Produce Good Excuses Is Not Christian Charity; It Is Only Fairness. To Be A Christian Means To Forgive The Inexcusable In You.

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

Truth And Falsehood

Meaningless Combinations Of Words Do Not Suddenly Acquire Meaning Simply Because We Prefix To Them The Two Other Words ' God Can'.

When The Voice Of Your Friend Or The Page Of Your Book Sinks Into Democratic Equality With The Pattern Of The Wallpaper, The Feel Of Your Clothes, Your Memory Of Last Night, And The Noises From The Road, You Are Falling Asleep. The Highly Selective Consciousness Enjoyed By Fully Alert Men, With All Its Builded Sentiments And Consecrated Ideals, Has As Much To Be Called Real As The Drowsy Chaos, And More.

They Tell Me, Lord, That When I Seem To Be In Speech With You. Since But One Voice Is Heard, It

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

God Is Not A Static Thing...but A Dynamic, Pulsating Activity, A Life, Almost A Kind Of Drama. Almost, If You Will Not Think Me Irreverent, A Kind Of Dance.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

Readers Are Advised To Remember That The Devil Is A Liar.

Wrong Will Be Right, When Aslan Comes In Sight, At The Sound Of His Roar, Sorrows Will Be No More, When He Bares His Teeth, Winter Meets Its Death, And When He Shakes His Mane, We Shall Have Spring Again.

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

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

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

There Seems To Be Hardly Any One Among My Acquaintance From Whom I Have Not Learned.

An 'impersonal God'-well And Good. A Subjective God Of Beauty, Truth And Goodness, Inside Our Own Heads-better Still. A Formless Life-force Surging Through Us, A Vast Power Which We Can Tap-best Of All. But God Himself, Alive, Pulling At The Other End Of The Cord, Perhaps Approaching At An Infinite Speed, The Hunter, King, Husband-that Is Quite Another Matter.

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.

What Would Really Satisfy Us Would Be A God Who Said Of Anything We Happened To Like Doing, 'what Does It Matter So Long As They Are Contented?'

Anyone Who Endeavors To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened. You Are Embarking On Something That Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

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.

I Read In A Periodical The Other Day That The Fundamental Thing Is How We Think Of God. By God Himself, It Is Not! How God Thinks Of Us Is Not Only More Important, But Infinitely More Important.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

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

I Wish They Would Remember That The Charge To Peter Was "feed My Sheep", Not "try Experiments On My Rats", Or Even "teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks".

Only A Real Risk Tests The Reality Of A Belief.

We Have Lost The Invaluable Faculty Of Being Shocked A Faculty Which Has Hitherto Almost Distinguished The Man Or Woman From The Beast Or Child.

If Ever They Remembered Their Life In This World It Was As One Remembers A Dream.

You Can Give The Devil Too Much Or Too Little Attention.

Evil Comes From The Abuse Of Free Will

Surely You Know That If A Man Can't Be Cured Of Churchgoing, The Next Best Thing Is To Send Him All Over The Neighbourhood Looking For The Church That "suits" Him Until He Becomes A Taster Or Connoisseur Of Churches.

You Must Therefore Zealously Guard In His Mind The Curious Assumption 'my Time Is My Own'. Let Him Have The Feeling That He Starts Each Day As The Lawful Possessor Of Twenty-four Hours. Let Him Feel As A Grievous Tax That Portion Of This Property Which He Has To Make Over To Him Employers, And As A Generous Donation That Further Portion Which H Allows To Religious Duties. But What He Must Never Be Permitted To Doubt Is That The Total From Which These Deductions Have Been Made Was, In Some Mysterious Sense, His Own Personal Birthright.

Nothing Is More Characteristically Juvenile Than Contempt For Juvenility. . . Youth's Characteristic Chronological Snobbery.

Don't Judge A Man By Where He Is, Because You Don't Know How Far He Has Come.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

If The Immutable Heart Can Be Grieved By The Puppets Of Its Own Making, It Is Divine Omnipotence, No Other, That Has Subjected It, Freely, And In A Humility That Passes Understanding. If The World Exists Not Chiefly That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us, Yet That Very Fact, On A Deeper Level, Is So For Our Sakes. If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

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

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

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike. Subjectivism About Moral Values Is Eternally Incompatible With Democracy. We And Our Rulers Are Of One Kind Only So Long As We Are Subject To One Law. But If There Is No Law Of Nature, The Ethos Of Any Society Is The Creation Of Its Rulers, Educators And Conditioners; And Every Creator Stands Above And Outside His Own Creation.

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not. We Cannot Compete, In Simplicity With People Who Are Inventing Religions. How Could We? We Are Dealing With Fact. Of Course Anyone Can Be Simple If He Has No Facts To Bother About.

A Moderated Religion Is As Good For Us As No Religion At All—and More Amusing.

Screwtape Letters

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

Unless I Believe In God, I Cannot Believe In Thought: So I Can Never Use Thought To Disbelieve In God.

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.

In Coming To Understand Anything We Are Rejecting The Facts As They Are For Us In Favour Of The Facts As They Are.

It Is Always The Novice Who Exaggerates.

Screwtape Letters

To Be In Love Involves The Most Irresistible Conviction That One Will Go On Being In Love Until One Dies, And That Possession Of The Beloved Will Confer, Not Merely Frequent Ecstasies, But Settled, Fruitful, Deep-rooted, Lifelong Happiness.

Hail Lord, ...loose My Chains.

In Silence And In Meditation On The Eternal Truths, I Hear The Voice Of God Which Excites Our Hearts To Greater Love.

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

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.

Reasoning Is Never, Like Poetry, Judged From The Outside At All.

We All Appear As Dunces When Feigning An Interest In Things We Care Nothing About.

Mental Pain Is Less Dramatic Than Physical Pain, But It Is More Common And Also More Hard To Bear. The Frequent Attempt To Conceal Mental Pain Increases The Burden: It Is Easier To Say “my Tooth Is Aching” Than To Say “my Heart Is Broken.

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.

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

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

It's No Use Telling Us That Something Was 'mysterious' Or 'loathsome' Or 'awe-inspiring' Or 'voluptuous.' By Direct Description, By Metaphor And Simile, By Secretly Evoking Powerful Associations, By Offering The Right Stimuli To Our Nerves (in The Right Degree And The Right Order), And By The Very Beat And Vowel-melody And Length And Brevity Of Your Sentences, You Must Bring It About That We, We Readers, Not You, Exclaim, 'how Mysterious!' Or 'loathsome' Or Whatever It Is. Let Me Taste For Myself, And You'll Have No Need To Tell Me How I Should React.

Unless Christianity Is Wholly False, The Perception Of Ourselves Which We Have In Moments Of Shame Must Be The Only True One.

There Is No Neutral Ground In The Universe. Every Square Inch, Every Split Second Is Claimed By God, And Counterclaimed By Satan.

God Has No Needs. Human Love, As Plato Teaches Us, Is The Child Of Poverty – Of Want Or Lack; It Is Caused By A Real Or Supposed Goal In Its Beloved Which The Lover Needs And Desires. But God's Love, Far From Being Caused By Goodness In The Object, Causes All The Goodness Which The Object Has, Loving It First Into Existence, And Then Into Real, Though Derivative, Lovability. God Is Goodness. He Can Give Good, But Cannot Need Or Get It. In That Sense , His Love Is, As It Were, Bottomlessly Selfless By Very Definition; It Has Everything To Give, And Nothing To Receive.

[milton's] Argument Is (a) St. Augustine Was Wrong In Thinking God's Only Purpose In Giving Adam A Female, Instead Of A Male, Companion, Was Copulation. For (b) There Is A "peculiar Comfort" In The Society Of Man And Woman "beside, (i.e. In Addition To, Apart From) The Genial Bed"; And (c) We Know From Scripture That Something Analogous To "play" Or "slackening The Cords" Occurs Even In God. That Is Why The Song Of Songs Describes A Thousand Raptures...far On The Hither Side Of Carnal Enjoyment.

He Thinks Great Folly, Child,' Said Aslan. "this World Is Bursting With Life For These Few Days Because The Song With Which I Called It Into Life Still Hangs In The Air And Rumbles In The Ground. It Will Not Be So For Long. But I Cannot Tell That To This Old Sinner, And I Cannot Comfort Him Either; He Has Made Himself Unable To Hear My Voice. If I Spoke To Him, He Would Hear Only Growlings And Roarings. Oh, Adam's Son, How Cleverly You Defend Yourself Against All That Might Do You Good!

Repentance Is Not Something God Demands Of You Before He Will Take You Back And Which He Could Let You Off If He Chose; It Is Simply A Description Of What Going Back Is Like.

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

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?

This Is Where Men, Even The Trustiest, Fail Us. Their Heart Is Never So Wholly Given To Any Matter But That Some Trifle Of A Meal, Or A Drink, Or A Sleep, Or A Joke, Or A Girl, May Come In Between Them And It, And Then (even If You Are A Queen) You'll Get No More Good Out Of Them Until They've Had Their Way.

Before We Can Be Cured We Must Want To Be Cured. Those Who Really Wish For Help Will Get It; But For Many Modern People Even The Wish Is Difficult.

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

For You Will Certainly Carry Out God's Purpose, However You Act, But It Makes A Difference To You Whether You Serve Like Judas Or Like John.

Making A Difference

And That's Why, When They Want To Get Rid Of Anyone, They Usually Bring Him Down Here (like They Were Doing With Me) And Say They'll Leave Him To The Ghosts. But I Always Wondered If They Didn't Really Drown 'em Or Cut Their Throats. I Never Quite Believed In The Ghosts. But Those Two Cowards You've Just Shot Believed All Right. They Were More Scared Of Taking Me To My Death Than I Was Of Going.

The Command "be Ye Prfect" Is Not Idealistic Gas. Nor Is It A Command To Do The Impossible. He Said (in The Bible) That We Were "gods" And He Is Going To Make Good His Words. He Will Make Us Into A God Or Goddess, A Dazzling, Radiant, Immortal Creature...a Bright Stainless Mirror Which Reflects Back To God Perfectly.

Nothing Which Is At All Times And In Every Way Agreeable To Us Can Have Objective Reality. It Is Of The Very Nature Of The Real That It Should Have Sharp Corners And Rough Edges, That It Should Be Resistant, Should Be Itself. Dream-furniture Is The Only Kind On Which You Never Stub Your Toes Or Bang Your Knee.

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

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

By Repenting, One Acknowledges Them As Sins-therefore Not To Be Repeated.

The 'frankness' Of People Sunk Below Shame Is A Very Cheap Frankness.

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

Human Beings Judge One Another By Their External Actions. God Judges Them By Their Moral Choices.

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.

Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art... It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things That Give Value To Survival.

Provided That Any Of Those Neighbours Sing Out Of Tune Or Have Boots That Squeak, Or Double Chins, Or Odd Clothes, The Patient Will Quite Easily Believe That Their Religion Must Therefore Be Somehow Ridiculous.

Wouldn't It Be Dreadful If Some Day In Our Own World, At Home, Men Start Going Wild Inside, Like The Animals Here, And Still Look Like Men, So That You'd Never Know Which Were Which.

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?

God Is Basic Fact. He Must Not Be Thought Of As A Featureless Generality. He Is The Most Concrete Thing There Is.

Miracles Are For Beginners.

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

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.

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.

If Only This Toothache Would Go Away, I Could Write Another Chapter On The Problem Of Pain.

...we Sacrifice Other Species To Our Own Not Because Our Own Has Any Objective Metaphysical Privilege Over Others, But Simply Because It Is Ours. It May Be Very Natural To Have This Loyalty To Our Own Species, But Let Us Hear No More From The Naturalists About The "sentimentality" Of Anti-vivisectionists. If Loyalty To Our Own Species - Preference For Man Simply Because We Are Men - Is Not Sentiment, Then What Is?

A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.

But I Remember More Dearly Autumn Afternoons In Bottoms That Lay Intensely Silent Under Old Great Trees

I Think Each Village Was Meant To Feel Pity For Its Own Sick And Poor Whom It Can Help And I Doubt If It Is The Duty Of Any Private Person To Fix His Mind On Ills Which He Cannot Help. This May Even Become An Escape From The Works Of Charity We Really Can Do To Those We Know. God May Call Any One Of Us To Respond To Some Far Away Problem Or Support Those Who Have Been So Called. But We Are Finite And He Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

Certain Things, If Not Seen As Lovely Or Detestable, Are Not Being Correctly Seen At All.

I Believe, To Be Sure, That Any Man Who Reaches Heaven Will Find That What He Abandoned (even In Plucking Out His Right Eye) Has Not Been Lost: That The Kernel Of What He Was Really Seeking Even In His Most Depraved Wishes Will Be There, Beyond Expectation, Waiting For Him In 'the High Countries'.

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

To Have Faith In Christ Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice.

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

Provocation Doesn't Make Me Ill-tempered: It Only Shows Me How Ill-tempered I Am.

I Dread Specialists In Power Because They Are Specialists Speaking Outside Of Their Special Subject.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off His Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

Friendship (as The Ancients Saw) Can Be A School Of Virtue, But Also (as They Did Not See) A School Of Vice. It Is Ambivalent. It Makes Good Men Better And Bad Men Worse.

And Out Of That Hopeless Attempt Has Come Nearly All That We Call Human History—money, Poverty, Ambition, War, Prostitution, Classes, Empires, Slavery—the Long Terrible Story Of Man Trying To Find Something Other Than God Which Will Make Him Happy.

It Will Not Bother Me In The Hour Of Death To Reflect That I Have Been "had For A Sucker" By Any Number Of Imposters But It Would Be A Torment To Know That One Had Refused Even One Person In Need.

If War Is Ever Lawful, Then Peace Is Sometimes Sinful.

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.

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

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

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.

God Will Look To Every Soul Like Its First Love Because He Is Its First Love.

I Think It Very Wrong To Pray For People While They Are In Distress And Then Not To Continue Praying, Now With Thanksgiving, When They Are Relieved.

All Right, Beautiful. You've Got Me Tied Down To This Stone Table, And There's A Knife In Your Hand That Says You Get To Rule Narnia For Another Hundred Years. So Maybe I Die, And Winter Goes On. Maybe The Hunger And The Darkness And The Fear Never End. But As Long As The Children Believe In Me, I Know That Aslan Will Live Again. I, The Great Lion, Son Of The Emperor Over The Sea, Will Live Again And -- Aaaaauugh!!

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

Love, In Its Own Nature, Demands The Perfecting Of The Beloved.

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

100 Per Cent Of Us Die, And The Percentage Cannot Be Increased.

The Proper Rewards Are Not Simply Tacked On To The Activity For Which They Are Given, But Are The Activity Itself In Consummation.

God Knows Our Situation; He Will Not Judge Us As If We Had No Difficulties To Overcome. What Matters Is The Sincerity And Perseverance Of Our Will To Overcome Them.

If We Cut Up Beasts Simply Because They Cannot Prevent Us And Because We Are Backing Our Own Side In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only Logical To Cut Up Imbeciles, Criminals, Enemies, Or Capitalists For The Same Reasons.

God Has Landed On This Enemy-occupied World In Human Form...the Perfect Surrender And Humiliation Was Undergone By Christ: Perfect Because He Was God, Surrender And Humiliation Because He Was Man.

A Recovery Of The Old Sense Of Sin Is Essential To Christianity. Christ Takes It For Granted That Men Are Bad. Until We Really Feel This Assumption Of His To Be True, Though We Are Part Of The World He Came To Save, We Are Not Part Of The Audience To Whom His Words Are Addressed.

Better To Be Miserable With Her Than Happy Without Her. Let Our Hearts Break Provided They Break Together. If The Voice Within Us Does Not Say This It Is Not The Voice Of Eros.

Kindness Consents Very Readily To The Removal Of Its Object – We Have All Met People Whose Kindness To Animals Is Constantly Leading Them To Kill Animals Lest They Should Suffer. Kindness, Merely As Such, Cares Not Whether Its Object Becomes Good Or Bad, Provided Only That It Escapes Suffering.

The Laws Of Thought Are Also The Laws Of Things: Of Things In The Remotest Space And The Remotest Time.

Peter Did Not Feel Very Brave; Indeed, He Felt He Was Going To Be Sick. But That Made No Difference To What He Had To Do.

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.

And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?

Almost Certainly God Is Not In Time. His Life Does Not Consist Of Moments One Following Another...ten-thirty-- And Every Other Moment From The Beginning Of The World--is Always Present For Him. If You Like To Put It This Way, He Has All Eternity In Which To Listen To The Split Second Of Prayer Put Up By A Pilot As His Plane Crashes In Flames.

It Would Seem That Our Lord Finds Our Desires Not Too Strong, But Too Weak. We Are Half-hearted Creatures, Fooling About With Drink And Sex And Ambition When Infinite Joy Is Offered Us, Like An Ignorant Child Who Wants To Go On Making Mud Pies In A Slum Because He Cannot Imagine What Is Meant By The Offer Of A Holiday At The Sea. We Are Far Too Easily Pleased.

Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.

Friendship Love

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe The Sun Has Risen, Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditures Excludes Them.

The Glory Of God, And, As Our Only Means Of Glorifying Him, The Salvation Of Human Souls, Is The Real Business Of Life.

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.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

Isn't It Absolutely Essential To Keep A Fierce Left And Fierce Right, Both On Their Toes And Each Terrified Of The Other? That's How We Get Things Done.

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.

To See, In Some Measure, Like God. His Love And His Knowledge Are Not Distinct From One Another, Not From Him. We Could Almost Say He Sees Because He Loves, And Therefore Loves Although He Sees.

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