Background Image

...

The World Does Not Consist Of 100 Percent Christians And 100 Percent Non-christians. There Are People (a Great Many Of Them) Who Are Slowly Ceasing To Be Christians But Who Still Call Themselves By That Name: Some Of Them Are Clergymen. There Are Other People Who Are Slowly Becoming Christians Though They Do Not Yet Call Themselves So.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The World Does Not

C. S. Lewis

...

The World Does Not Consist Of 100 Percent Christians And 100 Percent Non-christians. There Are People (a Great Many Of Them) Who Are Slowly Ceasing To Be Christians But Who Still Call Themselves By That Name: Some Of Them Are Clergymen. There Are Other People Who Are Slowly Becoming Christians Though They Do Not Yet Call Themselves So.

Views: 7

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

Time Is The Very Lens Through Which Ye See - Small And Clear, As Men See Through The Wrong End Of A Telescope - Something That Would Otherwise Be Too Big For Ye To See At All. That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Parts Of Eternal Reality.

It Is The Magician's Bargain: Give Up Our Soul, Get Power In Return. But Once Our Souls, That Is, Ourselves, Have Been Given Up, The Power Thus Conferred Will Not Belong To Us. We Shall In Fact Be The Slaves And Puppets Of That To Which We Have Given Our Souls.

You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.

Put First Things First

First Things First

It Is Hardly Complimentary To God That We Should Choose Him As An Alternative To Hell.

Human Culture Has Always Had To Exist Under The Shadow Of Something Infinitely More Important Than Itself. If Men Had Postponed The Search For Knowledge And Beauty Until They Were Secure, The Search Would Never Have Begun.

My Will, Shall Become Your Will. My Heart, Shall Become Your Heart.

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.'

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.

If You Are Worried About The People Outside, The Most Unreasonable Thing You Can Do Is Remain Outside Yourself. Christians Are Christ's Body...every Addition To That Body Enables Him To Do More. If You Want To Help Those Outside You Must Add Your Own Little Cell To The Body Of Christ Who Along Can Help Them. Cutting Off A Man's Fingers Would Be A Odd Way Of Getting Him To Do More Work.

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.

Being In Love Is A Good Thing, But It Is Not The Best Thing. There Are Many Things Below It, But There Are Also Things Above It. You Cannot Make It The Basis Of A Whole Life. It Is A Noble Feeling, But It Is Still A Feeling. Now No Feeling Can Be Relied On To Last In Its Full Intensity, Or Even To Last At All. Knowledge Can Last, Principles Can Last, Habits Can Last; But Feelings Come And Go.

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

Watchin' And Listenin' Is The Thing At Present; Not Talking.

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

In Each Of My Friends There Is Something That Only Some Other Friend Can Fully Bring Out. By Myself I Am Not Large Enough To Call The Whole Man Into Activity; I Want Other Lights Than My Own To Show All His Facets... Hence True Friendship Is The Least Jealous Of Loves. Two Friends Delight To Be Joined By A Third, And Three By A Fourth, If Only The Newcomer Is Qualified To Become A Real Friend. They Can Then Say, As The Blessed Souls Say In Dante, "here Comes One Who Will Augment Our Loves." For In This Love "to Divide Is Not To Take Away.

Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends?

Praise Is The Mode Of Love Which Always Has Some Element Of Joy In It.

But How Can The Characters In A Play Guess The Plot? We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage. To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are "on" Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.

Nobody Who Gets Enough Food And Clothing In A World Where Most Are Hungry And Cold Has Any Business To Talk About 'misery.'

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

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

We Are What We Believe We Are.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

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

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.

There Is Hope For A Man Who Has Never Read Malory Or Boswell Or Tristam Shandy Or Shakespeare's Sonnets: But What Can You Do With A Man Who Says He "has Read" Them, Meaning He Has Read Them Once, And Thinks That This Settles The Matter?

Now Eros Makes A Man Really Want, Not A Woman, But One Particular Woman. In Some Mysterious But Quite Indisputable Fashion The Lover Desires The Beloved Herself, Not The Pleasure She Can Give.

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

Even If There Were Pains In Heaven, All Who Understand Would Desire Them.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely

As A Christian I Take It For Granted That Human History Will Some Day End; And I Am Offering Omniscience No Advice As To The Best Date For That Consummation.

"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 Only Things We Can Keep Are The Things We Freely Give To God. What We Try To Keep For Ourselves Is Just What We Are Sure To Lose.

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

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

Truth And Falsehood

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

You're A Mere Chick. I Remember You When You Were A Egg. Don't Come Trying To Teach Me, Sir. Crabs And Crumpets!

We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.

This Wasn't A Garden,' Said Susan Presently. 'it Was A Castle.

Do Not Look Sad. We Shall Meet Soon Again." "please, Aslan", Said Lucy,"what Do You Call Soon?" "i Call All Times Soon" Said Aslan; And Instantly He Was Vanished Away.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

But I Will Not Tell You How Long Or Short The Way Will Be; Only That It Lies Across A River. But Do Not Fear That, For I Am The Great Bridge Builder.

The Christian Life Is Simply A Process Of Having Your Natural Self Changed Into A Christ Self, And That This Process Goes On Very Far Inside. One's Most Private Wishes, One's Point Of View, Are The Things That Have To Be Changed.

Life Is Too Deep For Words, So Don't Try To Describe It, Just Live It.

Self Improvement

Once You Become Aware That The Main Business That You Are Here For Is To Know God, Most Of Life's Problems Fall Into Place Of Their Own Accord. J.i. Packer Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Will Get Neither.

Thus The Criminal Ceases To Be A Person, A Subject Of Rights And Duties, And Becomes Merely An Object On Which Society Can Work. And This Is, In Principle, How Hitler Treated The Jews. They Were Objects; Killed Not For Ill Desert But Because, On His Theories, They Were A Disease In Society. If Society Can Mend, Remake, And Unmake Men At Its Pleasure, Its Pleasure May, Of Course, Be Humane Or Homicidal. The Difference Is Important. But, Either Way, Rulers Have Become Owners.

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.

You Come Of The Lord Adam And The Lady Eve," Said Aslan. "and That Is Both Honour Enough To Erect The Head Of The Poorest Beggar, And Shame Enough To Bow The Shoulders Of The Greatest Emperor On Earth. Be Content.

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.

Got To Start By Finding It, Have We? Can't Start By Looking For It, I Suppose?

If Education Is Beaten By Training, Civilization Dies.

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

We Ought To Give Thanks For All Fortune: If It Is Good, Because It Is Good; If Bad, Because It Works In Us Patience, Humility, Contempt Of This World And The Hope Of Our Eternal Country.

If People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit.

If I Find In Myself A Desire Which No Experience In This World Can Satisfy, The Most Probable Explanation Is That I Was Made For Another World.

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

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

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege Of Individuality.. .here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

Hail Lord, ...loose My Chains.

I Thought I Could Describe A State; Make A Map Of Sorrow. Sorrow, Hoever, Turns Out To Be Not A State But A Process.

All Hell Is Smaller Than One Pebble Of Your Earthly World; But It Is Smaller Than One Atom Of This World, The Real World.

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

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.

Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even Agony Into A Glory

When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)

You Can't Really Study People; You Can Only Get To Know Them.

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

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

Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

Try To Exclude The Possibility Of Suffering Which The Order Of Nature And The Existence Of Free-wills Involve, And You Find That You Have Excluded Life Itself

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.

Reality The Iconoclast Once More. Heaven Will Solve Our Problems, But Not, I Think, By Showing Us Subtle Reconciliations Between All Our Apparently Contradictory Notions. The Notions Will All Be Knocked From Under Our Feet. We Shall See That There Never Was Any Problem.

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

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

I Want God, Not My Idea Of God.

Post-christian Man Is Not The Same As Pre-christian Man. He Is As Far Removed As Virgin Is From Widow: There Is Nothing In Common Except Want Of A Spouse: But There Is A Great Difference Between A Spouse-to-be And A Spouse Lost.

We Seek An Enlargement Of Our Being. We Want To Be More Than Ourselves . . . We Want To See With Other Eyes, To Imagine With Other Imaginations, To Feel With Other Hearts, As Well As With Our Own . . . We Demand Windows.

The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him.

If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.

Gratitude Looks To The Past And Love To The Present; Fear, Avarice, Lust, And Ambition Look Ahead.

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

There Is No Use In Talking As If Forgiveness Were Easy. For We Find That The Work Of Forgiveness Has To Be Done Over And Over Again.

Man Must Endure His Going Hence.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Would Not Be A Great Moral Teacher. He Would Either Be A Lunatic - On A Level With The Man Who Says He Is A Poached Egg - Or Else He Would Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God; Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool; You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us.

When I Lay These Questions Before God I Get No Answer. But A Rather Special Sort Of 'no Answer.' It Is Not The Locked Door. It Is More Like A Silent, Certainly Not Uncompassionate, Gaze. As Though He Shook His Head Not In Refusal But Waiving The Question. Like, 'peace, Child; You Don't Understand.

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.

A World Of Nice People, Content In Their Own Niceness, Looking No Further, Turned Away From God, Would Be Just As Desperately In Need Of Salvation As A Miserable World-and Might Be Even More Difficult To Save.

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

Thus, And Not Otherwise, The World Was Made. Either Something Or Nothing Must Depend On Individual Choices.

Individual Choice

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.

Not My Idea Of God, But God. Not My Idea Of H., But H. Yes, And Also Not My Idea Of My Neighbour, But My Neighbour. For Don't We Often Make This Mistake As Regards People Who Are Still Alive -- Who Are With Us In The Same Room? Talking And Acting Not To The Man Himself But To The Picture -- Almost The Précis -- We've Made Of Him In Our Own Minds? And He Has To Depart From It Pretty Widely Before We Even Notice The Fact.

Christianity Has Not Message For Those Who Do Not Realize They Are Sinners.

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

When You Argue 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.

Well, Sir, If Things Are Real, They’re There All The Time." "are They?" Said The Professor; And Peter Did Not Quite Know What To Say.

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work.

If They Are Wrong They Need Your Prayers All The More; And If They Are Your Enemies, Then You Are Under Orders To Pray For Them. That Is One Of The Rules Common To The Whole House.

God, In The End, Gives People What They Most Want, Including Freedom From Himself. What Could Be More Fair?

There Might Be Things More Terrible Even Than Losing Someone You Love By Death.

Someone You Love

There Was A Boy Called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, And He Almost Deserved It.

To Forgive The Incessant Provocations Of Daily Life - To Keep On Forgiving The Bossy Mother-in-law, The Bullying Husband, The Nagging Wife, The Selfish Daughter, The Deceitful Son - How Can We Do It? Only, I Think, By Remembering Where We Stand, By Meaning Our Words When We Say In Our Prayers Each Night, “forgive Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us.” We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse God’s Mercy For Ourselves. There Is No Hint Of Exceptions And God Means What He Says.

The Higher The Stakes, The Greater The Temptation To Lose Your Temper.

The More We Let God Take Us Over, The More Truly Ourselves We Become - Because He Made Us. He Invented Us. He Invented All The Different People That You And I Were Intended To Be. . .it Is When I Turn To Christ, When I Give Up Myself To His Personality, That I First Begin To Have A Real Personality Of My Own.

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.

You Can't Go Against The Grain Of The Universe And Not Expect To Get Splinters.

All Joy... Emphasizes Our Pilgrim Status; Always Reminds, Beckons, Awakens Desire. Our Best Havings Are Wantings.

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

Aren't All These Notes The Senseless Writings Of A Man Who Won't Accept The Fact That There Is Nothing We Can Do With Suffering Except To Suffer It?

Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Ever Be Really Yours.

Perhaps The Experience Had Been So Complete That Repetition Would Be Vulgarity - Like Asking To Hear The Same Symphony Twice In A Day.

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

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.

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

Well, Whatever They Say, You Don't Feel Like Ghosts.

I Am A Product Of Long Corridors, Empty Sunlit Rooms, Upstairs Indoor Silences, Attics Explored In Solitude, Distant Noises Of Gurgling Cisterns And Pipes, And The Noise Of Wind Under The Tiles. Also, Of Endless Books.

All Possible Knowledge, Then, Depends On The Validity Of Reasoning...unless Human Reasoning Is Valid No Science Can Be True.

God Is Not Merely Good, But Goodness; Goodness Is Not Merely Divine, But God.

Some Have Paid Me An Undeserved Compliment By Supposing That My Letters Were The Ripe Fruit Of Many Years' Study In Moral And Ascetic Theology. They Forgot That There Is An Equally Reliable, Though Less Creditable, Way Of Learning How Temptation Works.

For Most Of Us The Prayer In Gethsemane Is The Only Model. Removing Mountains Can Wait.

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

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

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.

Long Before History Began We Men Have Got Together Apart From The Women And Done Things. We Had Time.

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

We Never Find Out The Strength Of The Evil Impulse Inside Us Until We Try To Fight It.

In Such A Fearful World, We Need A Fearless Church

I Have Seen Landscapes . . . Which, Under A Particular Light, Make Me Feel That At Any Moment A Giant Might Raise His Head Over The Next Ridge.

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.

If You Ask Why We Should Obey God, In The Last Resort The Answer Is, 'i Am.' To Know God Is To Know That Our Obedience Is Due To Him.

For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex

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

Isn't It Funny How Day By Day Nothing Changes, But When You Look Back, Everything Is Different.

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen Of Narnia.

The Modern Habit Of Doing Ceremonial Things Unceremoniously Is No Proof Of Humility; Rather It Proves The Offender's Inability To Forget Himself In The Rite, And His Readiness To Spoil For Every One Else The Proper Pleasure Of Ritual.

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.

Let There Be Wicked Kings And Beheadings, Battles And Dungeons, Giants And Dragons, And Let The Villans Be Soundly Killed At The End Of The Book. I Think It Is Possible That By Confining Your Child To The Blameless Stories Of Life In Which Nothing At All Alarming Ever Happens, You Would Fail To Banish The Terrors, And Would Succeed In Banishing All That Can Ennoble Them Or Make Them Endurable.

All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out Of Date.

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.

No Good Work Is Done Anywhere Without Aid From The Father Of Lights.

The Naturalists Have Been Engaged In Thinking About Nature. They Have Not Attended To The Fact That They Were Thinking. The Moment One Attends To This It Is Obvious That One's Own Thinking Cannot Be Merely A Natural Event, And That Therefore Something Other Than Nature Exists. The Supernatural Is Not Remote Or Abstruse; It Is A Matter Of Daily And Hourly Experience, As Intimate As Breathing.

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

Pure, Spiritual, Intellectual Love Shot Form Their Faces Like Barbedlightning. It Was So Unlike The Love We Experience That Its Expressioncould Easily Be Mistaken For Ferocity.

Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

When You Come To Knowing God, The Initiative Lies On His Side. If He Does Not Show Himself, Nothing You Can Do Will Enable You To Find Him. And, In Fact, He Shows Much More Of Himself To Some People Than To Others—not Because He Has Favourites, But Because It Is Impossible For Him To Show Himself To A Man Whose Whole Mind And Character Are In The Wrong Condition. Just As Sunlight, Though It Has No Favourites, Cannot Be Reflected In A Dusty Mirror As Clearly As In A Clean One.

Love, In The Christian Sense, Does Not Mean An Emotion. It Is A State Not Of The Feelings But Of The Will; That State Of The Will Which We Have Naturally About Ourselves, And Must Learn To Have About Other People.

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

The Life-force Is A Sort Of Tame God. You Can Switch It On When You Want, But It Will Not Bother You. All The Thrills Of Religion And None Of The Cost. Is The Life-force The Greatest Achievement Of Wishful Thinking The World Has Yet Seen?

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

I Have Discovered That The People Who Believe Most Strongly In The Next Life Do The Most Good In The Present One.

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

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

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

I Have Read The Aeneid Through More Often Than I Have Read Any Long Poem.

Necessity May Not Be The Opposite Of Freedom, And Perhaps A Man Is Most Free When, Instead Of Producing Motives, He Could Only Say, "i Am What I Do.

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

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.

The Sane Would Do No Good If They Made Themselves Mad To Help Madmen.

It Is When We Notice The Dirt That God Is Most Present In Us; It Is The Very Sign Of His Presence.

Seek Unity And You Will Find Neither Unity Nor Truth.seek The Light Of Truth, And You Will Find Unity And Truth.

The Smallest Good Act Today Is The Capture Of A Strategic Point From Which, A Few Months Later, You May Be Able To Go On To Victories You Never Dreamed Of.

Once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

You And I Who Still Enjoy Fairy Tales Have Less Reason To Wish Actual Childhood Back. We Have Kept Its Pleasures And Added Some Grown-up Ones As Well.

Is There A Difference Between A Man Who Thinks That Honesty Is The Best Policy, And An Honest Man?

You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not While You Are Sleeping. You Can See Mistakes In Arithmetic When Your Mind Is Working Properly; While You Are Making Them You Cannot See Them. Good People Know About Both Bad And Evil; Bad People Do Not Know About Either.

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.

In God's Dimension, So To Speak, You Find A Being Who Is Three Persons While Remaining One Being, Just As A Cube Is Six Squares While Remaining One Cube.

What Do People Mean When They Say, 'i Am Not Afraid Of God Because I Know He Is Good'? Have They Never Even Been To A Dentist?

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

If We Discover A Desire Within Us That Nothing In This World Can Satisfy, Also We Should Begin To Wonder If Perhaps We Were Created For Another World.

Now Repentance Is No Fun At All. It Is Something Much Harder Than Merely Eating Humble Pie. It Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self-will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into For Thousands Of Years. It Means Undergoing A Kind Of Death. In Fact, It Needs A Good Man To Repent. And Here's The Catch. Only A Bad Person Needs To Repent: Only A Good Person Can Repent Perfectly. The Worse You Are The More You Need It And The Less You Can Do It. The Only Person Who Could Do It Perfectly Would Be A Perfect Person - And He Would Not Need It.

In The Moral Sphere, Every Act Of Justice Or Charity Involves Putting Ourselves In The Other Person's Place And Thus Transcending Our Own Competitive Particularity.

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

She's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others - You Can Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

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.

No One Can Teach Riding So Well As A Horse.

Practice Makes Perfect

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

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.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

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.

Through Pride The Devil Became The Devil. Pride Leads To Every Vice, It's The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

Some People Probably Think Of The Resurrection As A Desperate Last Moment Expedient To Save The Hero From A Situation Which Had Got Out Of The Author's Control.

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.'

No Emotion Is, In Itself, A Judgement; In That Sense All Emotions And Sentiments Are Alogical. But They Can Be Reasonable Or Unreasonable As They Conform To Reason Or Fail To Conform. The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

No Natural Feelings Are High Or Low, Holy Or Unholy, In Themselves. They Are All Holy When God's Hand Is On The Rein. They All Go Bad When They Set Up On Their Own And Make Themselves Into False Gods.

Trending Author

Stephen Jay Gould

Richard G. Scott

Category