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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.
-C. S. Lewis
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The Real Trouble Is

C. S. Lewis
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.
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Hurt
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Change
Eggs
Ordinary
We Must Meet Children As Equals In That Area Of Our Nature Where We Are Their Equals...the Child As Reader Is Neither To Be Patronized Nor Idolized: We Talk To Him As Man To Man.
Children
Men
Reader
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.
Children
Men
Midnight
I Know The Two Great Commandments, And I'd Better Get On With Them.
Two
Knows
Commandments
In Your Life You Meet People. Some You Never Think About Again. Some, You Wonder What Happened To Them. There Are Some That You Wonder If They Ever Think About You. And Then There Are Some That You Wish You Never Have To Think About Again. But You Do.
Thinking
People
Wish
Death And Resurrection Are What The Story Is About And Had We But Eyes To See It, This Has Been Hinted On Every Page, Met Us, In Some Disguise, At Every Turn, And Even Been Muttered In Conversations Between Such Minor Characters (if They Are Minor Characters) As The Vegetables.
Character
Eye
Vegetables
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.
Loneliness
Needs
Conscious
...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.
Rights
Punishment
Names
Obedience Is The Road To Freedom.
Obedience
A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.
Christian
Men
Repent
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.
Looks
Lions
Steps
In The Long Run The Answer To All Those Who Object To The Doctrine Of Hell, Is Itself A Question: What Are You Asking God To Do? To Wipe Out Their Past Sins And, At All Costs, To Give Them A Fresh Start, Smoothing Every Difficulty And Offering Every Miraculous Help? But He Has Done So, On Calvary. To Forgive Them? They Will Not Be Forgiven. To Leave Them Alone? Alas, I Am Afraid That Is What He Does.
Running
Past
Offering
The Assumption That Things Which Have Been Conjured In The Past Will Always Be Conjured In The Guiding Principle Not Of Rational But Of Animal Behavior.
Animal
Past
Guiding Principles
The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start. Theories As To How It Did This Are Another Matter. A Good Many Different Theories Have Been Held As To How It Works; What All Christians Are Agreed On Is That It Does Work.
Christian
Good Man
Fresh Start
Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.
Growth
Synthesis
Continuity
[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.
Mean
Self
Training
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.
Book
Reading
Age
It Is In The Process Of Being Worshipped That God Communicates His Presence To Men.
Men
Worship
Process
To Live In A Fully Predictable World Is Not To Be A Man.
Men
World
Be A Man
We Cannot Understand. The Best Is Perhaps What We Understand Least.
Most Of Us, I Suppose, Have A Secret Country But For Most Of Us It Is Only An Imaginary Country. Edmund And Lucy Were Luckier Than Other People In That Respect.
Country
People
Secret
Though Under Earth, And Throneless Now I Be Yet While I Lived All Earth Was Under Me.
Earth
If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.
Kindness
Records
Definitions
Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?
Mean
Thinking
Faces
Literature Adds To Reality, It Does Not Simply Describe It. It Enriches The Necessary Competencies That Daily Life Requires And Provides; And In This Respect, It Irrigates The Deserts That Our Lives Have Already Become.
Respect
Book
Healing
The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.
Wise
Teaching
Historical
If Things Are Real, They're There All The Time.
Real
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Lion Witch Wardrobe
For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.
God
Creatures
Seems
Mere Improvement Is Not Redemption, Though Redemption Always Improves People
People
Redemption
Improvement
The Hard Sayings Of Our Lord Are Wholesome To Those Only Who Find Them Hard.
Pain
Lord
Our Lord
The More We Get What We Now Call 'ourselves' Out Of The Way And Let Him Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become.
Way
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--
Long
Majesty
Protection
Friends Are Seldom Found; They Are Made.
Made
Found
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.
Christian
Inspiration
Pride
There Are A Dozen Views About Everything Until You Know The Answer. Then There's Never More Than One.
Truth
Views
Answers
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.
Wisdom
Philosophy
Goes On
Did I Hate Him, Then? Indeed, I Believe So. A Love Like That Can Grow To Be Nine-tenths Hatred And Still Call Itself Love.
Hate
Believe
Hatred
The Sense That In This Universe We Are Treated As Strangers, The Longing To Be Acknowledged, To Meet With Some Response, To Bridge Some Chasm That Yawns Between Us And Reality, Is Part Of Our Inconsolable Secret. And Surely, From This Point Of View, The Promise Of Glory, In The Sense Described, Becomes Highly Relevant To Our Deep Desire. For Glory Meant Good Report With God, Acceptance By God, Response, Acknowledgment, And Welcome Into The Heart Of Things. The Door On Which We Have Been Knocking All Our Lives Will Open At Last.
Heart
Mean
Acceptance
By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!
Wish
Gum
Enough
Your People Eat Dry And Tasteless Flesh But It Is Off Plates As Smooth As Ivory And As Round As The Sun.
Ivory
People
Dry
Term, Holidays, Term, Holidays, Till We Leave School, And Then Work, Work, Work Till We Die.
School
Holiday
Term
We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin. But Mere Time Does Nothing Either To The Fact Or To The Guilt Of A Sin.
Guilt
Doe
Facts
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.
Recovery
Men
Essentials
But Do You Really Mean, Sir," Said Peter, "that There Could Be Other Worlds-all Over The Place, Just Round The Corner-like That?" "nothing Is More Probable," Said The Profesor, Taking Off His Spectacles And Beginning To Polish Them, While He Muttered To Himself, "i Wonder What They Do Teach Them At These Schools.
School
Mean
Other Worlds
We Have Discovered That The Scheme Of 'outlawing War' Has Made War More Like An Outlaw Without Making It Less Frequent And That To Banish The Knight Does Not Alleviate The Suffering Of The Peasant.
War
Knights
Suffering
Am I Lost Or Just Less Found?
Lost
Found
No Man Who Says, 'i'm As Good As You,' Believes It. He Would Not Say It If He Did.
Believe
Men
Ifs
But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.
Children
Paws
Humility Is Not Thinking Less Of Yourself, It's Thinking Of Yourself Less.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Christian
You Can't Really Study People; You Can Only Get To Know Them.
People
Study
Knows
I Have Come Home At Last! This Is My Real Country! I Belong Here. This Is The Land I Have Been Looking For All My Life, Though I Never Knew It Till Now... Come Further Up, Come Further In!
Country
Real
Home
The Story Itself Should Force Its Moral Upon You. You Find Out What The Moral Is By Writing The Story.
Writing
Stories
Moral
We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.
Stage
Producers
Playwright
No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear. I Am Not Afraid, But The Sensation Is Like Being Afraid. The Same Fluttering In The Stomach, The Same Restlessness, The Yawning. I Keep On Swallowing. At Other Times It Feels Like Being Mildly Drunk, Or Concussed. There Is A Sort Of Invisible Blanket Between The World And Me. I Find It Hard To Take In What Anyone Says. Or Perhaps, Hard To Want To Take It In. It Is So Uninteresting. Yet I Want The Others To Be About Me. I Dread The Moments When The House Is Empty. If Only They Would Talk To One Another And Not To Me.
Fear
Grief
Yawning
[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.
Faith
Men
Thinking
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.
Wisdom
Struggle
Cutting
Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.
Love
Relationship Advice
Highest
Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?
Heart
Should
If You Have A Religion It Must Be Cosmic.
Omnipotence
Cosmic
Ifs
Fools!" Said The Man, Stamping His Foot With Rage. "that Is The Sort Of Talk That Brought Me Here, And I'd Better Have Been Drowned Or Never Born. Do You Hear What I Say? This Is Where Dreams — Dreams, Do You Understand — Come To Life, Come Real. Not Daydreams: Dreams.
Dream
Real
Men
The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.
Men
Church
Christ
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.
Girl
Dwarves
Maps
I Suggest To You That It Is Because God Loves Us That He Gives Us The Gift Of Suffering. Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World. You See, We Are Like Blocks Of Stone Out Of Which The Sculptor Carves The Forms Of Men. The Blows Of His Chisel, Which Hurt Us So Much Are What Make Us Perfect.
Hurt
Pain
Block
Evil Comes From The Abuse Of Free Will
Evil
Abuse
Free Will
Imagine Yourself As A Living House.
House
Imagine
Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.
Prayer
Doe
Change God
Man Has Got To Take Charge Of Man.... Then Real Education, Including Pre-natal Education. By Real Education I Mean One That Has No 'take-it-or-leave-it' Nonsense. A Real Education Makes The Patient What It Wants Infallibly: Whatever He Or His Parents Try To Do About It. Of Course, It'll Have To Be Mainly Psychological At First. But We'll Get On To Biochemical Conditioning Int He End And Direct Manipulation Of The Brain.
Education
Real
Mean
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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