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The State Exists Simply To Promote And To Protect The Ordinary Happiness Of Human Beings In This Life. A Husband And Wife Chatting Over A Fire, A Couple Of Friends Having A Game Of Darts In A Pub, A Man Reading A Book In His Own Room Or Digging In His Own Garden-that Is What The State Is There For. And Unless They Are Helping To Increase And Prolong And Protect Such Moments, All The Laws, Parliaments, Armies, Courts, Police, Economics, Etc., Are Simply A Waste Of Time.

-C. S. Lewis

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The State Exists Simply

C. S. Lewis

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The State Exists Simply To Promote And To Protect The Ordinary Happiness Of Human Beings In This Life. A Husband And Wife Chatting Over A Fire, A Couple Of Friends Having A Game Of Darts In A Pub, A Man Reading A Book In His Own Room Or Digging In His Own Garden-that Is What The State Is There For. And Unless They Are Helping To Increase And Prolong And Protect Such Moments, All The Laws, Parliaments, Armies, Courts, Police, Economics, Etc., Are Simply A Waste Of Time.

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God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself.

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The Man In Christ Rose Again, Not Only The God.

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

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

To Enter Heaven Is To Become More Human Than You Ever Succeeded In Being On Earth; To Enter Hell Is To Be Banished From Humanity. What Is Cast (or Casts Itself) Into Hell Is Not A Man: It Is 'remains.'

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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.

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

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

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

Yes, I Know,' Interrupted Puddleglum. 'and Few Return To The Sunlit Lands. You Needn't Say It Again. You Are A Chap Of One Idea, Aren't You?

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.

I Object To That Remark Very Strongly! - The Magician's Nephew

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

Learning Experience

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

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Extraordinary Things

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

In Great Literature, I Become A Thousand Different Men But Still Remain Myself.

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.

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

We Were Talking Of Dragons, Tolkien And I In A Berkshire Bar. The Big Workman Who Had Sat Silent And Sucked His Pipe All The Evening, From His Empty Mug With Gleaming Eye Glanced Towards Us: "i Seen 'em Myself!" He Said Fiercely.

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Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

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.

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

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Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

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Nothing Can Seem Extraordinary Until You Have Discovered What Is Ordinary.

The New Testament Does Not Envisage Solitary Religion; Regular Assembly For Worship Is Everywhere In The Epistles.

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It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

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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.

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No Thanks," Said Digory, "i Don't Know That I Care Much About Living On And On After Everyone I Know Is Dead. I'd Rather Live An Ordinary Time And Die And Go To Heaven.

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

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And As Jill Gazed At Its Motionless Bulk, She Realized That She Might As Well Have Asked The Whole Mountain To Move Aside For Her Convenience.

Ideally, We Should Like To Define A Good Book As One Which 'permits, Invites, Or Compels' Good Reading

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.

Good People Know About Both Good And Evil: Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

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

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

Our Merriment Must Be Of That Kind (and It Is, In Fact, The Merriest Kind) Which Exists Between People Who Have, From The Outset, Taken Each Other Seriously - No Flippancy, No Superiority, No Presumption. And Our Charity Must Be A Real And Costly Love, With Deep Feeling For The Sins In Spite Of Which We Love The Sinner - No Mere Tolerance Or Indulgence Which Parodies Love As Flippancy Parodies Merriment.

Man Must Endure His Going Hence.

If You Asked Twenty Good Men To-day What They Thought The Highest Of The Virtues, Nineteen Of Them Would Reply, Unselfishness. But If You Asked Almost Any Of The Great Christians Of Old He Would Have Replied, Love - You See What Has Happened? A Negative Term Has Been Substituted For A Positive, And This Is Of More Than Philological Importance. The Negative Ideal Of Unselfishness Carries With It The Suggestion Not Primarily Of Securing Good Things For Others, But Of Going Without Them Ourselves, As If Our Abstinence And Not Their Happiness Was The Important Point.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him. If You Injure Someone You Dislike, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him More. If You Do Him A Good Turn, You Will Find Yourself Disliking Him Less.

Finding Yourself

If You Never Take Risks, You'll Never Accomplish Great Things. Everybody Dies, But Not Everyone Has Lived.

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

Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.

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.

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

Very Few Modern People Think Friendship A Love Of Comparable Value Or Even A Love At All.

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

The Greatest Evils In The World Will Not Be Carried Out By Men With Guns, But By Men In Suits Sitting Behind Desks

It's Always Winter But It's Never Christmas.

And Since We Cannot Deceive The Whole Human Race All The Time, It Is Most Important Thus To Cut Every Generation Off From All Others; For Where Learning Makes A Free Commerce Between The Ages There Is Always The Danger That The Characteristic Errors Of One May Be Corrected By The Characteristic Truths Of Another.

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

Bridge-players Tell Me That There Must Be Some Money On The Game 'or Else People Won't Take It Seriously'. Apparently It's Like That. Your Bid - For God Or No God, For A Good God Or The Cosmic Sadist, For Eternal Life Or Nonentity - Will Not Be Serious If Nothing Much Is Staked On It. And You Will Never Discover How Serious It Was Until The Stakes Are Raised Horribly High, Until You Find That You Are Playing Not For Counters Or For Sixpences But For Every Penny You Have In The World.

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death; I Must Never Let It Get Snowed Under Or Turned Aside; I Must Make It The Main Object Of Life To Press On To That Other Country And To Help Others To Do The Same.

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

You Can't See Anything Properly While Your Eyes Are Blurred With Tears.

Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, 'no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It,' Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.

It Is Funny How Mortals Always Picture Us As Putting Things Into Their Minds: In Reality Our Best Work Is Done By Keeping Things Out.

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You....hand Over The Whole Natural Self, All The Desires Which You Think Innocent As Well As The Ones You Think Wicked- The Whole Outfit. I Will Give You A New Self Instead. In Fact, I Will Give You Myself: My Own Will Shall Become Yours.

Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

A Man Can't Be Always Defending The Truth; There Must Be A Time To Feed On It.

"i Wish I Had Never Been Born," She Said. "what Are We Born For?" "for Infinite Happiness," Said The Spirit. "you Can Step Out Into It At Any Moment..."

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

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.

Monarchy Can Easily Be "debunked," But Watch The Faces, Mark Well The Debunkers. These Are The Men Whose Taproot In Eden Has Been Cut: Whom No Rumour Of The Polyphony, The Dance, Can Reach - Men To Whom Pebbles Laid In A Row Are More Beautiful Than An Arch. Where Men Are Forbidden To Honour A King They Honour Millionaires, Athletes Or Film Stars Instead: For Spiritual Nature, Like Bodily Nature, Will Be Served; Deny It Food And It Will Gobble Poison.

God Gives His Gifts Where He Finds The Vessel Empty Enough To Receive Them.

You Ask Whether I Have Ever Been In Love: Fool As I Am, I Am Not Such A Fool As That. But If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business. But Though I Have No Personal Experience Of The Things They Call Love, I Have What Is Better - The Experience Of Sappho, Of Euripides, Of Catallus, Of Shakespeare, Of Spenser, Of Austen, Of Bronte, Of Anyone Else I Have Read.

Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.

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

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.

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

Child, To Say The Very Thing You Really Mean, The Whole Of It, Nothing More Or Less Or Other Than What You Really Mean; That's The Whole Art And Joy Of Words.

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.

Never, In Peace Or War, Commit Your Virtue Or Your Happiness To The Future. Happy Work Is Best Done By The Man Who Takes His Long-term Plans Somewhat Lightly And Works From Moment To Moment 'as To The Lord.' It Is Only Our Daily Bread That We Are Encouraged To Ask For. The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty Can Be Done Or Any Grace Received.

Don't Think Of God In Terms Of Forms, Because Forms Are Limited And God Is Unlimited.

When Things Go Wrong, You'll Find They Usually Go On Getting Worse For Some Time; But When Things Once Start Going Right They Often Go On Getting Better And Better.

When Things Go Wrong

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

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

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

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.

See The Bear In His Own Den Before You Judge Of His Conditions.

The Event Of Falling In Love... In One High Bound It Has Overleaped The Massive Wall Of Our Selfhood; It Has Made Appetite Itself Altruistic, Tossed Personal Happiness Aside As A Triviality And Planted The Interests Of Another In The Centre Of Our Being.

Falling In Love

There Is A Difficulty About Disagreeing With God. He Is The Source From Which All Your Reasoning Power Comes: You Could Not Be Right And He Wrong Any More Than A Stream Can Rise Higher Than Its Own Source. When You Are Arguing Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

To Every Soul, God Will Look Like Its First Love Because He Is Its First Love. Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It - Made For It Stitch By Stitch As A Glove Is Made For A Hand.

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.

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.

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

We Must Stop Regarding Unpleasant Or Unexpected Things As Interruptions Of Real Life. The Truth Is That Interruptions Are Real Life.

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.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.

If You Love Deeply, You're Going To Get Hurt Badly. But It's Still Worth It.

He Died Not For Men, But For Each Man. If Each Man Had Been The Only Man Made, He Would Have Done No Less.

Cobbles And Kettledrums! ...i Hope This Madness Isn't Going To End In A Moonlit Climb And Broken Necks.

Enemy-occupied Territory---that Is What This World Is. Christianity Is The Story Of How The Rightful King Has Landed, You Might Say Landed In Disguise, And Is Calling Us To Take Part In A Great Campaign Of Sabotage.

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

To Be Ignorant And Simple Now-not To Be Able To Meet The Enemies On Their Own Ground-would Be To Throw Down Our Weapons And To Betray Our Uneducated Brethren Who Have, Under God, No Defense But Us Against The Intellectual Attacks Of The Heathen. Good Philosophy Must Exist, If For No Other Reason, Because Bad Philosophy Needs To Be Answered.

A Dogmatic Belief In Objective Value Is Necessary To The Very Idea Of A Rule Which Is Not Tyranny Or An Obedience Which Is Not Slavery.

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

No One Can Say 'he Jests At Scars Who Never Felt A Wound' For I Have Never For One Moment Been In A State Of Mind To Which Even The Imagination Of Serious Pain Was Less Than Intolerable. If Any Man Is Safe From The Danger Of Under-estimating This Adversary, I Am That Man.

It Doesn't Really Matter Whether You Grip The Arms Of The Dentist's Chair Or Let Your Hands Lie In Your Lap. The Drill Drills On.

For They (art And Music) Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

Do You Not Know How Bashful Friendship Is? Friends - Comrades - Do Not Look At Each Other. Friendship Would Be Ashamed.

I Think That If God Forgives Us We Must Forgive Ourselves. Otherwise, It Is Almost Like Setting Up Ourselves As A Higher Tribunal Than Him.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai. The Moral Law May Exist To Be Transcended: But There Is No Transcending It For Those Who Have Not First Admitted Its Claims Up On Them, And Then Tried With All Their Strength To Meet That Claim, And Fairly And Squarely Faced The Fact Of Their Failure.

God Is Love, And That Love Works Through Men-especially Through The Whole Community Of Christians.

A Tyrannous And Gluttonous Demand For Affection Can Be A Horrible Thing. But In Ordinary Life No One Calls A Child Selfish Because It Turns For Comfort To Its Mother; Nor An Adult Who Turns To His Fellow "for Company." Those, Whether Children Or Adults, Who Do So Least Are Not Usually The Most Selfless.

It Is Easy To Acknowledge, But Almost Impossible To Realize For Long, That We Are Mirrors Whose Brightness, If We Are Bright, Is Wholly Derived From The Sun That Shines Upon Us.

Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.

...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?

I Prefer Being Honest To Being 'honest To God.'

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

Good, As It Ripens, Becomes Continually More Different Not Only From Evil But From Other Good.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable.

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.

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?

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

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

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.

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--

He Cannot "tempt" To Virtue As We Do To Vice. He Wants Them To Learn To Walk And Must Therefore Take Away His Hand; And If Only The Will To Walk Is Really There He Is Pleased Even With Their Stumbles.

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

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

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.

Christianity Asserts That Every Individual Human Being Is Going To Live For Ever, And This Must Be Either True Or False. Now There Are A Good Many Things Which Would Not Be Worth Bothering About If I Were Going To Live Only Seventy Years, But Which I Had Better Bother About Very Seriously If I Am Going To Live For Ever.

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

You Will Say These Are Very Small Sins... [but] It Does Not Matter How Small The Sins Are Provided That Their Cumulative Effect Is To Edge The Man Away From The Light And Out Into The Nothing. Murder Is No Better Than Cards If Cards Can Do The Trick. Indeed, The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One--the Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts

A Little Lie Is Like A Little Pregnancy It Doesn't Take Long Before Everyone Knows.

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

I May Repeat 'do As You Would Be Done By' Till I Am Black In The Face, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbor As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbor As Myself Till I Learn To Love God;and I Cannot Learn To Love God Except By Learning To Obey Him.

Oh, I'm A Dangerous Criminal, I Am,' Said The Dwarf Cheerfully.

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

And Above All, You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Panelling…the Question Should Never Be: ‘do I Like That Kind Of Service?’ But ‘are These Doctrines True: Is Holiness There? Does My Conscience Move Me Towards This? Is My Reluctance To Move To This Door Due To My Pride, Or My Mere Taste, Or My Personal Dislike For This Particular Door-keeper?

But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

The Fact That You Are Giving Money To Charity Does Not Mean That You Need Not Try To Find Out Whether That Charity Is A Fraud Or Not.

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

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.

It Is Always The Novice Who Exaggerates.

Screwtape Letters

We Do Not Enjoy A Story Fully At The First Reading. Not Till The Curiosity, The Sheer Narrative Lust, Has Been Given Its Sop And Laid Asleep, Are We At Leisure To Savour The Real Beauties.

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

War Creates No Absolutely New Situation: It Simply Aggravates The Permanent Human Situation So That We Can No Longer Ignore It. Human Life Has Always Been Lived On The Edge Of A Precipice.

No Time For Better Words, No Time To Unsay Anything. -til We Have Faces

For The Christian, There Are, Strictly Speaking, No Chances. A Secret Master Of The Ceremonies Has Been At Work.

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.

To Live His Life In His Own Way, To Call His House His Castle, To Enjoy The Fruits Of His Own Labour, To Educate His Children As His Conscience Directs, To Save For Their Prosperity After His Death -- These Are Wishes Deeply Ingrained In Civilised Man. Their Realization Is Almost As Necessary To Our Virtues As To Our Happiness. From Their Total Frustration Disastrous Results Both Moral And Psychological Might Follow.

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything, And Your Heart Will Most Certainly Be Wrung And Possibly Broken ... The Only Place Outside Heaven Where You Can Be Perfectly Safe From All The Dangers And Perturbations Of Love Is Hell.

What Can Be Better Than To Get Out A Book On Saturday Afternoon And Thrust All Mundane Considerations Away Till Next Week.

The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

Theology Offers You A Working Arrangement, Which Leaves The Scientist Free To Continue His Experiments And The Christian To Continue His Prayers.

No One Returns From Christianity To The Same State He Was Before Christianity But Into A Worse State: The Difference Between A Pagan And An Apostate Is The Difference Between An Unmarried Woman And An Adulteress. For Faith Perfects Nature But Faith Lost Corrupts Nature. Therefore Many Men Of Our Time Have Lost Not Only The Supernatural Light But Also The Natural Light Which Pagans Possessed.

Besides Reasoning About Matters Of Fact, Men Also Make Moral Judgements.

My Own View Is That The Churches Should Frankly Recognise That The Majority Of The British People Are Not Christians And, Therefore, Cannot Be Expected To Live Christian Lives. There Ought To Be Two Distinct Kinds Of Marriage: One Governed By The State With Rules Enforced On All Citizens, The Other Governed By The Church With Rules Enforced By Her On Her Own Members." --about The Only Statement I Agree With In This Book

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare.

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man... It Is The Comparison That Makes You Proud: The Pleasure Of Being Above The Rest. Once The Element Of Competition Is Gone, Pride Is Gone.

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness.

Into The Void Of Silence, Into The Empty Space Of Nothing, The Joy Of Life Is Unfurled.

Morality Is A Mountain Which We Cannot Climb By Our Own Efforts; And If We Could We Should Only Perish In The Ice And Unbreathable Air Of The Summit, Lacking Those Wings With Which The Rest Of The Journey Has To Be Accomplished. For It Is From There That The Real Ascent Begins. The Ropes And Axes Are 'done Away' And The Rest Is A Matter Of Flying.

I Don't Want Him To Live Forever, And I Know That He's Not Going To Live Forever Whether I Want Him To Or Not.

There Have Been Men Before Now Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself.

The Real Oxford Is A Close Corporation Of Jolly, Untidy, Lazy, Good-for-nothing Humorous Old Men, Who Have Been Electing Their Own Successors Ever Since The World Began And Who Intend To Go On With It. They'll Squeeze Under The Revolution Or Leap Over It When The Time Comes, Don't You Worry.

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