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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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The Real Moon,if You

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Enemy Will Not See You Vanish Into God's Company Without An Effort To Reclaim You.

Write About What Really Interests You, Whether It Is Real Things Or Imaginary Things, And Nothing Else.

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

Language Exists To Communicate Whatever It Can Communicate. Some Things It Communicates So Badly That We Never Attempt To Communicate Them By Words If Any Other Medium Is Available.

Every Time You Make A Choice You Are Turning The Central Part Of You, The Part Of You That Chooses, Into Something A Little Different From What It Was Before. And Taking Your Life As A Whole, With All Your Innumerable Choices, All Your Life Long You Are Slowly Turning This Central Thing Either Into A Heavenly Creature Or Into A Hellish Creature...

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

As Christians We Are Tempted To Make Unnecessary Concessions To Those Outside The Faith. We Give In Too Much. Now, I Don't Mean That We Should Run The Risk Of Making A Nuisance Of Ourselves By Witnessing At Improper Times, But There Comes A Time When We Must Show That We Disagree.

We Have On The One Hand A Desperate Need; Hunger, Sickness, And The Dread Of War. We Have, On The Other, The Conception Of Something That Might Meet It: Omnicompetent Global Technocracy. Are Not These The Ideal Opportunity For Enslavement? This Is How It Has Entered Before; A Desperate Need (real Or Apparent) In The One Party, A Power (real Or Apparent) To Relieve It, In The Other.

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

I Can't Imagine A Man Really Enjoying A Book And Reading It Only Once.

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

Daughter Of Eve From The Far Land Of Spare Oom Where Eternal Summer Reigns Around The Bright City Of War Drobe, How Would It Be If You Came And Had Tea With Me?

We Can Rest Contentedly In Our Sins And In Our Stupidities, And Anyone Who Has Watched Gluttons Shoveling Down The Most Exquisite Foods As If They Did Not Know What They Were Eating Will Admit That We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Consciences, But Shouts In Our Pains. It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

The False Religion Of Lust Is Baser Than The False Religion Of Mother-love Or Patriotism Or Art: But Lust Is Less Likely To Be Made Into A Religion.

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

God Has Infinite Attention To Spare For Each One Of Us.

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

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal.

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.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

Until The Theologians And The Ordained Clergy Begin To Communicate With Ordinary People In The Vernacular, In A Way That They Can Understand, I’m Going To Have To Do This Sort Of Thing.

We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe.

When Pain Is To Be Born, A Little Courage Helps More Than Much Knowledge, A Little Human Sympathy More Than Much Courage, And The Least Tincture Of The Love Of God More Than All.

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.

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

I Cannot Understand How A Man Can Appear In Print Claiming To Disbelieve Everything That He Presupposes When He Puts On The Surplice. I Feel It Is A Form Of Prostitution.

God Allows Us To Experience The Low Points Of Life In Order To Teach Us Lessons That We Could Learn In No Other Way.

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

In Order That We Finite Beings May Apprehend The Emporer He Translates His Glory Into Multiple Forms - Into Stars, Woods, Waters, Beasts, And The Bodies Of Men.

In Our Adversity, God Shouts To Us.

The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.

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.

The Moral Law Tells Us The Tune We Have To Play: Our Instincts Are Merely The Keys.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.

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.

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.

We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, 'blessed Are They That Mourn,' And I Accept It. I've Got Nothing That I Hadn't Bargained For. Of Course It Is Different When The Thing Happens To Oneself, Not To Others, And In Reality, Not Imagination.

We Hear A Great Deal About The Rudeness Of The Rising Generation. I Am An Oldster Myself And Might Be Expected To Take The Oldsters' Side, But In Fact I Have Been Far More Impressed By The Bad Manners Of Parents To Children Than By Those Of Children To Parents.

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.

The Process Of Living Seems To Consist In Coming To Realize Truths So Ancient And Simple That, If Stated, They Sound Like Barren Platitudes.

By This Method Thousands Of Humans Have Been Brought To Think That Humility Means Pretty Women Trying To Believe They Are Ugly And Clever Men Trying To Believe They Are Fools. And Since What They Are Trying To Believe May, In Some Cases, Be Manifest Nonsense, They Cannot Succeed In Believing It And We Have The Chance Of Keeping Their Minds Endlessly Revolving On Themselves In An Effort To Achieve The The Impossible.

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.

Failures Are Finger Posts On The Road To Achievement.

The Value Of Myth Is That It Takes All The Things You Know And Restores To Them The Rich Significance Which Has Been Hidden By The Veil Of Familiarity.

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

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

Ye Cannot Know Eternal Reality By A Definition. Time Itself, And All The Acts And Events That Fill Time Are The Definition, And It Must Be Lived.

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

Where, Except In The Present, Can The Eternal Be Met?

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

A Blessed Spirit Is A Mould Ever More And More Patient Of The Bright Metal Poured Into It, A Body Ever More Completely Uncovered To The Meridian Blaze Of The Spiritual Sun.

A Thing May Be Morally Neutral And Yet The Desire For That Thing May Be Dangerous.

He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.

You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best

The Value Of The Myth Is That It Takes All The Things We Know And Restores To Them The Rich Significance Which Has Been Hidden By ‘the Veil Of Familiarity.’ The Child Enjoys His Cold Meat, Otherwise Dull To Him, By Pretending It Is Buffalo, Just Killed With His Own Bow And Arrow. And The Child Is Wise. The Real Meat Comes Back To Him More Savory For Having Been Dipped In A Story…by Putting Bread, Gold, Horse, Apple, Or The Very Roads Into A Myth, We Do Not Retreat From Reality: We Rediscover It.

The Great Thing Is To Be Found At One's Post As A Child Of God, Living Each Day As Though It Were Our Last, But Planning As Though The World Might Last A Hundred Years.

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.

To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.

I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog.

The Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do.

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

We Must Beware Of The Past, Mustn't We? I Mean That Any Fixing Of The Mind On Old Evils Beyond What Is Absolutely Necessary For Repenting Our Own Sins And Forgiving Those Of Others Is Certainly Useless And Usually Bad For Us. Notice In Dante That The Lost Souls Are Entirely Concerned With Their Past! Not So The Saved.

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

God Is Not An Optional Extra, He's An Absolute Must!

One Is Sometimes Glad Not To Be A Great Theologian; One Might Easily Mistake It For Being A Good Christian.

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.

Each Day We Are Becoming A Creature Of Splendid Glory Or One Of Unthinkable Horror.

Aslan Is A Lion- The Lion, The Great Lion." "ooh" Said Susan. "i'd Thought He Was A Man. Is He-quite Safe? I Shall Feel Rather Nervous About Meeting A Lion"..."safe?" Said Mr Beaver ..."who Said Anything About Safe? 'course He Isn't Safe. But He's Good. He's The King, I Tell You.

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

'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Since I Am I, I Must Make An Act Of Self-surrender, However Small Or However Easy, In Living To God Rather Than To My Self.

Actually It Seems To Me That One Can Hardly Say Anything Either Bad Enough Or Good Enough About Life.

In Those Days A Boy On The Classical Side Officially Did Almost Nothing But Classics. I Think This Was Wise; The Greatest Service We Can To Education Today Is To Teach Few Subjects. No One Has Time To Do More Than A Very Few Things Well Before He Is Twenty, And When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

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

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.

The Value Given To The Testimony Of Any Feeling Must Depend On Our Whole Philosophy, Not Our Whole Philosophy On A Feeling.

The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start.

I'm On Aslan's Side Even If There Isn't Any Aslan To Lead It. I'm Going To Live As Like A Narnian As I Can Even If There Isn't Any Narnia.

We All Want Progress, But If You're On The Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing An About-turn And Walking Back To The Right Road; In That Case, The Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is The Most Progressive.

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.

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

They Stormed And Jeered At One Another In Long Meaningless Words Of About Twenty Syllables Each.

The More Imagination The Reader Has ... The More He Will Do For Himself. He Will, At A Mere Hint From The Author, Flood Wretched Material With Suggestion And Never Guess That He Is Himself Chiefly Making What He Enjoys.

When An Artist Is In The Strict Sense Working, He Of Course Takes Into Account The Existing Tastes, Interests And Capacity Of His Audience. These No Less Than The Language , The Marble, The Paint, Are Part Of His Aw Material.; To Be Used, Tamed, Sublimated, Not Ignored Or Defied. Haughty Indifference To Them Is Not Genius, It Is Laziness And Incompetence.

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

I Would Say If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity. But To Speak Of The Craft Itself, I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer. Writing Is Like A 'lust,' Or Like 'scratching When You Itch.' Writing Comes As A Result Of A Very Strong Impulse, And When It Does Come, I For One Must Get It Out.

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.

Sanity ... Had It Ever Been More Than A Convention -- A Comfortable Set Of Blinkers, An Agreed Mode Of Wishful Thinking, Which Excluded From Our View The Full Strangeness And Malevolence Of The Universe We Are Compelled To Inhabit?

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

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

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

Man's Conquest Of Nature Turns Out, In The Moment Of Its Consummation, To Be Nature's Conquest Of Man.

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

The Moment Good Taste Knows Itself, Some Of Its Goodness Is Lost.

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

Jesus Christ Did Not Say, 'go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right.'

Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It.

So Many Things--nay Every Real Thing--is Good If Only It Will Be Humble And Ordinate.

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.

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.

Perfect Goodness Can Never Debate About The End To Be Attained, And Perfect Wisdom Cannot Debate About The Means Most Suited To Achieve It.

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

But In Reading Great Literature I Become A Thousand Men And Yet Remain Myself. Like The Night Sky In The Greek Poem, I See With A Myriad Eyes, But It Is Still I Who See. Here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.

If We Really Think That Home Is Elsewhere And That This Life Is A Wandering To Find Home, Why Should We Not Look Forward To The Arrival?

Do Not Let Us Mistake Necessary Evils For Good.

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

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.

The Intelligentsia (scientists Apart) Are Losing All Touch With, And All Influence Over, Nearly The Whole Human Race. Our Most Esteemed Poets And Critics Are Read By Our Most Esteemed Critics And Poets (who Don't Usually Like Them Much) And Nobody Else Takes Any Notice. An Increasing Number Of Highly Literate People Simply Ignore What The 'highbrows' Are Doing. It Says Nothing To Them. The Highbrows In Return Ignore And Insult Them.

This Was Bad Grammar Of Course, But That Is How Beavers Talk When They Are Excited; I Mean, In Narnia--in Our World They Usually Don't Talk At All. - The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

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.

..(t)here Are Two Opposite Reasons For Being A Democrat. You May Think All Men So Good That They Deserve A Share In The Government Of The Commonwealth, And So Wise That The Commonwealth Needs Their Advice. That Is, In My Opinion, The False, Romantic Doctrine Of Democracy. On The Other Hand, You May Believe Fallen Men To Be So Wicked That Not One Of Them Can Be Trusted With Any Irresponsible Power Over His Fellows.

The Very Man Who Has Argued You Down, Will Sometimes Be Found, Years Later, To Have Been Influenced By What You Said

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.

Like A Good Chess Player, Satan Is Always Trying To Maneuver You Into A Position Where You Can Save Your Castle Only By Losing Your Bishop.

Do Not Dare Not To Dare.

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.

Friendship Is The Instrument By Which God Reveals To Each Of Us The Beauties Of Others.

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.

Has This World Been So Kind To You That You Should Leave With Regret? There Are Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

Non-christians Seem To Think That The Incarnation Implies Some Particular Merit Or Excellence In Humanity. But Of Course It Implies Just The Reverse: A Particular Demerit And Depravity. No Creature That Deserved Redemption Would Need To Be Redeemed. They That Are Whole Need Not The Physician. Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

You Had Nothing To Say About It And Yet Made The Nothing Up Into Words.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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

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

When A Man Is Getting Better He Understands More And More Clearly The Evil That Is Still Left In Him. When A Man Is Getting Worse He Understands His Own Badness Less And Less.

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

That Raises A Terrible Question. How Is It That People Who Are Quite Obviously Eaten Up With Pride Can Say They Believe In God And Appear To Themselves Very Religious? I Am Afraid It Means They Are Worshiping An Imaginary God.

Do Not Imagine That If You Meet A Really Humble Man He Will Be What Most People Call "humble" Nowadays: He Will Not Be A Sort Of Greasy, Smarmy Person, Who Is Always Telling You That, Of Course, He Is A Nobody. Probably All You Will Think About Him Is That He Seemed A Cheerful, Intelligent Chap Who Took A Real Interest In What You Said To Him.

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.

[the Natural Life] Knows That If The Spiritual Life Gets Hold Of It, All Its Self-centredness And Self-will Are Going To Be Killed And It Is Ready To Fight Tooth And Nail To Avoid That.

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

I Cannot Speak For The Way God Deals With Others; I Only Know How He Deals With Me Personally.

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

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

It Is Only Our Bad Temper That We Put Down To Being Tired Or Worried Or Hungry; We Put Our Good Temper Down To Ourselves.

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.

Art Can Teach Without At All Ceasing To Be Art.

If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Be Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

Telling The Truth

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

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

Put First Things First And We Get Second Things Thrown In: Put Second Things First & We Lose Both First And Second Things.

Put First Things First

There Have Been Times When I Think We Do Not Desire Heaven But More Often I Find Myself Wondering Whether, In Our Heart Of Hearts, We Have Ever Desired Anything Else.

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.

You'll Never Make A Good Impression On Other People Until You Stop Thinking What Sort Of Impression You Make.

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

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are The Picture. You Can’t See It, You Can't See Your True Self. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted.

You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.

God Can Show Himself As He Really Is Only To Real Men. And That Means Not Simply To Men Who Are Individually Good, But To Men Who Are United Together In A Body, Loving One Another, Helping One Another, Showing Him To One Another. For That Is What God Meant Humanity To Be Like; Like Players In One Band, Or Organs In One Body.

When The Most Important Things In Our Life Happen We Quite Often Do Not Know, At The Moment, What Is Going On.

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

...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.

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

Our Prayers For Others Flow More Easily Than Those For Ourselves. This Shows We Are Made To Live By Charity.

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.

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side.

The Distinction Between Pretending You Are Better Than You Are And Beginning To Be Better In Reality Is Finer Than Moral Sleuth Hounds Conceive.

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

While We Are Actually Subjected To Them, The 'moods' And 'spirits' Of Nature Point No Morals. Overwhelming Gaiety, Insupportable Grandeur, Sombre Desolation Are Flung At You. Make What You Can Of Them, If You Must Make At All. The Only Imperative That Nature Utters Is, 'look. Listen. Attend.

Very Often The Only Way To Get A Quality In Reality Is To Start Behaving As If You Had It Already.

He That But Looketh On A Plate Of Ham And Eggs To Lust After It Hath Already Committed Breakfast With It In His Heart

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.

Need-love Says Of A Woman "i Cannot Live Without Her"; Gift-love Longs To Give Her Happiness, Comfort, Protection - If Possible, Wealth; Appreciative Love Gazes And Holds Its Breath And Is Silent, Rejoices That Such A Wonder Should Exist Even If Not For Him, Will Not Be Wholly Dejected By Losing Her, Would Rather Have It So Than Never To Have Seen Her At All.

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.

Christian Theology Can Fit In Science, Art, Morality, And The Sub-christian Religious. The Scientific Point Of View Cannot Fit Any Of These Things, Not Even Science Itself.

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

You Can Get A Large Audience Together For A Strip-tease Act—that Is, To Watch A Girl Undress On The Stage. Now Suppose You Come To A Country Where You Could Fill A Theatre By Simply Bringing A Covered Plate On To The Stage And Then Slowly Lifting The Cover So As To Let Every One See, Just Before The Lights Went Out, That It Contained A Mutton Chop Or A Bit Of Bacon, Would You Not Think That In That Country Something Had Gone Wrong With The Appetite For Food?

I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.

The Desire For Bad Art Is The Desire Bred Of Habit: Like The Smoker's Desire For Tobacco, More Marked By The Extreme Malaise Of Denial Than By Any Very Strong Delight In Fruition.

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

Thought Provoking

You Will Not Find The Warrior, The Poet, The Philosopher Or The Christian By Staring Into His Eyes As If He Were Your Mistress: Better Fight Beside Him, Read With Him, Argue With Him, Pray With Him.

I Think We All Sin By Needlessly Disobeying The Apostolic Injunction To "rejoice" As Much As By Anything Else

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.

What Draws People To Be Friends Is That They See The Same Truth. They Share It.

For Narnia And For Aslan!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

"welcome, Prince," Said Aslan. "do You Feel Yourself Sufficient To Take Up The Kingship Of Narnia?" "i - I Don't Think I Do, Sir," Said Caspian. "i'm Only A Kid." "good," Said Aslan. "if You Had Felt Yourself Sufficient, It Would Have Been A Proof That You Were Not."

We Do Not Truly See Light, We Only See Slower Things Lit By It, So That For Us Light Is On The Edge-the Last Thing We Know Before Things Become Too Swift For Us.

We 'have All We Want' Is A Terrible Saying When 'all' Does Not Include God. We Find God An Interruption. As St. Augustine Says Somewhere, 'god Wants To Give Us Something, But Cannot, Because Our Hands Are Full - There's Nowhere For Him To Put It.'

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'.

To Move With The Times Is, Of Course, To Go Where All Times Go.

If Human Life Is In Fact Ordered By A Beneficent Being Whose Knowledge Of Our Real Needs And Of The Way In Which They Can Be Satisfied Infinitely Exceeds Our Own, We Must Expect A Priori That His Operations Will Often Appear To Us Far From Beneficent And Far From Wise, And That It Will Be Our Highest Prudence To Give Him Our Confidence In Spite Of This.

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

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