Background Image

...

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Though It Was Bright

C. S. Lewis

...

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

Views: 7

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

A Man Is Never So Proud As When Striking An Attitude Of Humility.

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.

Nothing Is Really Ours Until We Share It.

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

We Follow One Who Stood And Wept At The Grave Of Lazarus-not Surely, Because He Was Grieved That Mary And Martha Wept, And Sorrowed For Their Lack Of Faith (though Some Thus Interpret) But Because Death, The Punishment Of Sin, Is Even More Horrible In His Eyes Than In Ours.

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.

We Are All Fallen Creatures And All Very Hard To Live With.

Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It.

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

I See People, As They Approach Me, Trying To Make Up Their Minds Whether They'll 'say Something About It' Or Not. I Hate If They Do, And If They Don't.

Miracles Are A Retelling In Small Letters Of The Very Same Story Which Is Written Across The Whole World In Letters Too Large For Some Of Us To See.

Look For The Valleys, The Green Places, And Fly Through Them. There Will Always Be A Way Through.

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.

Ah, You've Come Over The Water. Powerful Wet Stuff, Ain't It?

The Notion That Everyone Would Like Christianity To Be True, And Therefore All Atheists Are Brave Men Who Have Accepted The Defeat Of All Their Deepest Desires, Is Simply Impudent Nonsense.

To Walk Out Of His Will Is To Walk Into Nowhere.

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

In Reading Chesterton, As In Reading Macdonald, I Did Not Know What I Was Letting Myself In For. A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading. There Are Traps Everywhere — "bibles Laid Open, Millions Of Surprises," As Herbert Says, "fine Nets And Stratagems." God Is, If I May Say It, Very Unscrupulous.

If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.

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.

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

If There Is Equality It Is In His Love, Not In Us.

The True Enjoyments Must Be Spontaneous And Compulsive And Look To No Remoter End.

Life With God Is Not Immunity From Difficulties, But Peace In Difficulties.

Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.

A Spoiled Saint, A Pharisee, An Inquisitor, Or A Magician, Makes Better Sport To Hell Than A Mere Common Tyrant Or Debauchee.

The Christian Claim Is: Nothing Explains The Facts Better Than An All-powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent God Creating The Universe And Sending Jesus To Spread His Message. This Is About As Remarkable A Claim As Could Be Stated, And Yet It Is Tossed Out Lightly. Christians Seem To Imagine That "god Did It" Is As Plausible As The Natural Explanation That Stories Grow With The Retelling. The Christian Has The Burden Of Proof, And It's An Enormous Burden Given This Enormous Claim.

The Longer We Stay In Hell, The More We Become Attached To It.

Theocracy Is The Worst Of All Governments. If We Must Have A Tyrant, A Robber Baron Is Far Better Than An Inquisitor. The Baron's Cruelty May Sometimes Sleep, His Cupidity At Some Point Be Sated; And Since He Dimly Knows He Is Doing Wrong He May Possibly Repent. But The Inquisitor Who Mistakes His Own Cruelty And Lust Of Power And Fear For The Voice Of Heaven Will Torment Us Infinitely Because He Torments Us With The Approval Of His Own Conscience And His Better Impulses Appear To Him As Temptations.

The Enemy Wants To Bring The Man To A State Of Mind In Which He Could Design The Best Cathedral In The World, And Know It To Be The Best, And Rejoice In The Fact, Without Being Any More (or Less) Or Otherwise Glad At Having Done It Than He Would Be If It Had Been Done By Another. The Enemy Wants Him, In The End, To Be So Free From Any Bias In His Own Favour That He Can Rejoice In His Own Talents As Frankly And Gratefully As In His Neighbour's Talents--or In A Sunrise, An Elephant, Or A Waterfall.

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

The Mark Of Friendship Is Not That Help Will Be Given When The Pinch Comes (of Course It Will) But That, Having Been Given, It Makes No Difference At All.

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Or Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You.

Experience: That Most Brutal Of Teachers. But You Learn, My God Do You Learn.

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

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.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity.

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

Puddleglum,' They've Said, 'you're Altogether Too Full Of Bobance And Bounce And High Spirits. You've Got To Learn That Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Ell Pie. You Want Something To Sober You Down A Bit. We're Only Saying It For Your Own Good, Puddleglum.' That's What They Say. Now A Job Like This --a Journey Up North Just As Winter's Beginning Looking For A Prince That Probably Isn't There, By Way Of Ruined City Nobody's Ever Seen-- Will Be Just The Thing. If That Doesn't Steady A Chap, I Don't Know What Will.

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.

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

When You Are Happy, So Happy You Have No Sense Of Needing Him, So Happy That You Are Tempted To Feel His Claims Upon You As An Interruption, If You Remember Yourself And Turn To Him With Gratitude And Praise, You Will Be — Or So It Feels— Welcomed With Open Arms. But Go To Him When Your Need Is Desperate, When All Other Help Is Vain, And What Do You Find? A Door Slammed In Your Face, And A Sound Of Bolting And Double Bolting On The Inside. After That, Silence.

I Was Driven To Whipsnade One Sunny Morning. When We Set Out I Did Not Believe That Jesus Christ Is The Son Of God, And When We Reached The Zoo I Did. Yet I Had Not Exactly Spent The Journey In Thought. Nor In Great Emotion. “emotional” Is Perhaps The Last Word We Can Apply To Some Of The Most Important Events. It Was More Like When A Man, After A Long Sleep, Still Lying Motionless In Bed, Becomes Aware That He Is Now Awake.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.

Friendship Love

To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

One Of Our Great Allies At Present Is The Church Itself. Do Not Misunderstand Me. I Do Not Mean The Church As We See Her Spread Out Through All Time And Space And Rooted In Eternity, Terrible As An Army With Banners. That, I Confess, Is A Spectacle Which Makes Our Boldest Tempters Uneasy. But Fortunately It Is Quite Invisible To These Humans.

Some People Write Heavily, Some Write Lightly. I Prefer The Light Approach Because I Believe There Is A Great Deal Of False Reverence About. There Is Too Much Solemnity And Intensity In Dealing With Sacred Matters; Too Much Speaking In Holy Tones.

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?

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

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

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.

Knock And It Shall Be Opened.' But Does Knocking Mean Hammering And Kicking The Door Like A Maniac?

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.

It May Be Better To Live Under Robber Barons Than Under Omnipotent Moral Busybodies.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

I Felt Ashamed." "but Of What? Psyche, They Hadn't Stripped You Naked Or Anything?" "no, No, Maia. Ashamed Of Looking Like A Mortal -- Of Being A Mortal." "but How Could You Help That?" "don't You Think The Things People Are Most Ashamed Of Are Things They Can't Help?

By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!

But If We Admit God, Must We Admit Miracle? Indeed, Indeed, You Have No Security Against It. That Is The Bargain. Theology Says To You In Effect, 'admit God And With Him The Risk Of A Few Miracles, And I In Return Will Ratify Your Faith In Uniformity As Regards The Overwhelming Majority Of Events.

Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.

What He Says, Even On His Knees, About His Own Sinfulness Is All Parrot Talk. At Bottom, He Still Believes He Has Run Up A Very Favorable Credit-balance In The Enemy's Ledger By Allowing Himself To Be Converted, And Thinks That He Is Showing Great Humility And Condescension In Going To Church With These 'smug', Commonplace Neighbors At All.

How Could An Idiotic Universe Have Produced Creatures Whose Mere Dreams Are So Much Stronger, Better, Subtler Than Itself?

How Incessant And Great Are The Ills With Which A Prolonged Old Age Is Replete.

We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.

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.

I Believe That There Are Too Many Accommodating Preachers... Jesus Christ Did Not Say "go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right." The Gospel Is Something Completely Different. In Fact, It Is Directly Opposed To The World.

We Do Not Come To God As Bad People Trying To Become Good People; We Come As Rebels To Lay Down Our Arms.

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs.

The Christian Idea Of 'putting On Christ' Is The Whole Of Christianity.

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.

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

The Student Is Half Afraid To Meet One Of The Great Philosophers Face To Face. He Feels Himself Inadequate And Thinks He Will Not Understand Him. But If He Only Knew, The Great Man, Just Because Of His Greatness, Is Much More Intelligible Than His Modern Commentator. The Simplest Student Will Be Able To Understand, If Not All, Yet A Very Great Deal Of What Plato Said; But Hardly Anyone Can Understand Some Modern Books On Platonism.

Reality, Looked At Steadily, Is Unbearable.

There Is No Use Saying You Chose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.

Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.

Once People Stop Believing In God, The Problem Is Not That They Will Believe In Nothing; Rather, The Problem Is That They Will Believe Anything.

We Might Think That God Wanted Simply Obedience To A Set Of Rules: Whereas He Really Wants People Of A Particular Sort.

A Man Who Is Eating Or Lying With His Wife Or Preparing To Go To Sleep In Humility, Thankfulness And Temperance, Is, By Christian Standards, In An Infinitely Higher State Than One Who Is Listening To Bach Or Reading Plato In A State Of Pride.

In The Name Of The Fathers, And Of The Son And Of The Holy Ghost, Here Goes-i Mean Amen.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

The Divine Nature Wounds And Perhaps Destroys Us Merely By Being What It Is.

And That Is Enough To Raise Your Thoughts To What May Happen When The Redeemed Soul, Beyond All Hope And Nearly Beyond Belief, Learns At Last That She Has Pleased Him Whom She Was Created To Please. There Will Be No Room For Vanity Then. She Will Be Free From The Miserable Illusion That It Is Her Doing. With No Taint Of What We Should Now Call Self-approval She Will Most Innocently Rejoice In The Thing That God Has Made Her To Be, And The Moment Which Heals Her Old Inferiority Complex Forever Will Also Drown Her Pride… Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

The New Testament Writers Speak As If Christ's Achievement In Rising From The Dead Was The First Event Of Its Kind In The Whole History Of The Universe. He Is The 'first Fruits,' The Pioneer Of Life,' He Has Forced Open A Door That Has Been Locked Since The Death Of The First Man. He Has Met, Fought, And Beaten The King Of Death. Everything Is Different Because He Has Done So.

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

Everywhere, Except In Theology, There Has Been A Vigorous Growth Of Skepticism About Skepticism Itself.

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

Education Without Values, As Useful As It Is, Seems Rather To Make Man A More Clever Devil.

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

Reality Is Harsh To The Feet Of Shadows. But Will You Come?

Every Disability Conceals A Vocation, If Only We Can Find It, Which Will 'turn The Necessity To Glorious Gain.

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

I Thought I Could Describe A State; Make A Map Of Sorrow. Sorrow, However, Turns Out To Be Not A State, But A Process. It Needs Not A Map, But A History, And If I Don't Stop Writing That History At Some Quite Arbitrary Point, There's No Reason Why I Should Ever Stop.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You "love" Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did.

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

Someone You Love

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

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

You Do Not Fail In Obedience Through Lack Of Love, But You Have Lost Love Because You Never Attempted Obedience.

I Enjoyed My Breakfast This Morning, And I Think That Was A Good Thing And Do Not Think It Was Condemned By God. But I Do Not Think Myself A Good Man For Enjoying It.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

The Mouse Is A Fair Treat But This One Would Talk The Hind Legs Off A Donkey.

And Men Said That The Blood Of The Stars Flowed In Her Veins

Gone! ...and You And I Quite Crestfallen.

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

Make Your Choice, Adventurous Stranger, Strike The Bell And Bide The Danger, Or Wonder, Till It Drives You Mad, What Would Have Followed If You Had.

We Want To Know Not How We Should Pray If We Were Perfect But How We Should Pray Being As We Now Are ... It Is No Use To Ask God With Factitious Earnestness For A When Our Whole Mind Is In Reality Filled With The Desire For B. We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us, Not What Ought To Be In Us.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.

I Have Seen Great Beauty Of Spirit In Some Who Were Great Sufferers. I Have Seen Men, For The Most Part, Grow Better Not Worse With Advancing Years, And I Have Seen The Last Illness Produce Treasures Of Fortitude And Meekness From Most Unpromising Subjects.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

I Willingly Believe That The Damned Are, In One Sense, Successful, Rebels To The End; That The Doors Of Hell Are Locked On The Inside.

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.

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.

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is). What Is Going On In You At Present Is Simply The Beginning Of The Treatment. Continue Seeking With Cheerful Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

Ah, Poor Pole. It's Been To Much For Her, This Last Bit. Turned Her Head, I Shouldn't Wonder. She's Beginning To See Things.

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.

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.

Beauty Is Not Democratic; She Reveals Herself More To The Few Than To The Many.

I Know All About The Despair Of Overcoming Chronic Temptation. It Is Not Serious, Provided Self-offended Petulance, Annoyance At Breaking Records, Impatience, Etc., Don't Get The Upper Hand. No Amount Of Falls Will Really Undo Us If We Keep Picking Ourselves Up Each Time...the Only Fatal Thing Is To Lose One's Temper And Give Up.

We Must Learn By Experience To Avoid Either Trains Of Thought Or Social Situations Which For Us (not Necessarily For Everyone) Lead To Temptations. Like Motoring-don't Wait Till The Last Moment Before You Put On The Brakes But Put Them On, Gently And Quietly, While The Danger Is Still A Good Way Off.

Train Of Thought

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?

Adventures Are Never Fun While You're Having Them.

Our Desire Is Not Only To See Glory, But To Participate In The Glory We See.

No Interviews Without Appointments Except Between Nine And Ten P.m. On Second Saturdays.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

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?

What Flows Into You From Myth Is Not Truth But Reality (truth Is Always About Something, But Reality Is That About Which Truth Is), And Therefore, Every Myth Becomes The Father Of Innumerable Truths On The Abstract Level.

We May Be Sure That The Characteristic Blindness Of The Twentieth Century [...] Lies Where We Have Never Suspected It [...] The Only Palliative Is [...] By Reading Old Books. [...] The Books Of The Future Would Be Just As Good [...], But Unfortunately We Cannot Get At Them.

Where, Except In Uncreated Light, Can The Darkness Be Drowned?

A Promise Must Be About Actions: No One Can Promise To Go On Feeling A Certain Way.

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

I Have Seen Something Like It Happen In Battle. A Man Was Coming At Me, I At Him, To Kill. Then Came A Sudden Great Gust Of Wind That Wrapped Out Cloaks Over Our Swords And Almost Over Our Eyes, So That We Could Do Nothing To One Another But Must Fight The Wind Itself. And That Ridiculous Contention, So Foreign To The Business We Were On, Set Us Both Laughing, Face To Face - Friends For A Moment - And Then At Once Enemies Again And Forever.

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

Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself; Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Men, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.

Enemy-occupied Territory - That Is What This World Is.

A Great Many Of Those Who 'debunk' Traditional...values Have In The Background Values Of Their Own Which They Believe To Be Immune From The Debunking Process

The Very Lack Of Evidence Is Thus Treated As Evidence; The Absence Of Smoke Proves That The Fire Is Very Carefully Hidden...a Belief In Invisible Cats Cannot Be Logically Disproved Although It Does Tell Us A Good Deal About Those Who Hold It.

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.

But All Night, Aslan And The Moon Gazed Upon Each Other With Joyful And Unblinking Eyes.

Remember That All Worlds Draw To An End And That Noble Death Is A Treasure Which No One Is Too Poor To Buy.

We Were Made Not Primarily That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us.

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World. The Wartime Posters Told Us That Careless Talk Costs Lives. It Is Equally True That Careless Lives Cost Talk. Our Careless Lives Set The Outer World Talking; And We Give Them Grounds For Talking In A Way That Throws Doubt On The Truth Of Christianity Itself.

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

Shall I Ever Be Able To Read That Story Again; The One I Couldn't Remember? Will You Tell It To Me, Aslan? Oh Do,do,do." "indeed,yes, I Will Tell It To You For Years And Years. But Now, Come. We Must Meet The Master Of This House.

Do Not Be Deceived, Wormwood. Our Cause Is Never More In Danger Than When A Human, No Longer Desiring, But Still Intending, To Do Our Enemy's Will, Looks Round Upon A Universe From Which Every Trace Of Him Seems To Have Vanished, And Asks Why He Has Been Forsaken, And Still Obeys.

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.

Art Can Teach Without At All Ceasing To Be Art.

You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

Either The Day Must Come When Joy Prevails And All The Makers Of Misery Are No Longer Able To Infect It, Or Else, For Ever And Ever, The Makers Of Misery Can Destroy In Others The Happiness They Reject For Themselves.

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.

We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven. The Only Fatal Thing Is To Sit Down Content With Anything Less Than Perfection.

The Most Deeply Compelled Action Is Also The Freest Action. By That I Mean, No Part Of You Is Outside The Action.

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

Don't Say It Was "delightful"; Make Us Say "delightful" When We've Read The Description.

I Have At Last Come To The End Of The Faerie Queene: And Though I Say "at Last", I Almost Wish He Had Lived To Write Six Books More As He Had Hoped To Do — So Much Have I Enjoyed It.

We Are Not Merely Imperfect Creatures Who Must Be Improved; We Are Rebels Who Must Lay Down Our Arms.

All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.

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

I Never Fully Understood It Till My Friend Professor Tolkien Asked Me The Very Simple Question, 'what Class Of Men Would You Expect To Be Most Preoccupied With, And Hostile To, The Idea Of Escape?' And Gave The Obvious Answer: Jailers.

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.

You Must Not Do, You Must Not Even Try To Do, The Will Of The Father Unless You Are Prepared To 'know Of The Doctrine'.

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.

You Must Picture Me Alone In That Room In Magdalen, Night After Night, Feeling, Whenever My Mind Lifted Even For A Second From My Work, The Steady, Unrelenting Approach Of Him Whom I So Earnestly Desired Not To Meet. That Which I Greatly Feared Had At Last Come Upon Me. In The Trinity Term Of 1929 I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.

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

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."

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

A Catholic Priest, A Jewish Rabbi, And A Muslim Mullah All Walk Into A Bar, And The Bartender Says: - What Is This, A Joke? - Сhurch Is The Only Organization That Exists Primarily For The Benefit Of Non-members.

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

I Can Imagine No Man Who Will Look With More Horror On The End Than A Conscientious Revolutionary Who Has, In A Sense Sincerely, Been Justifying Cruelties And Injustices Inflicted On Millions Of His Contemporaries By The Benefits Which He Hopes To Confer On Future Generations: Generations Who, As One Terrible Moment Now Reveals To Him, Were Never Going To Exist. Then He Will See The Massacres, The Faked Trials, The Deportations, To Be All Ineffaceably Real, An Essential Part, His Part, In The Drama That Has Just Ended: While The Future Utopia Had Never Been Anything But A Fantasy.

Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted. And If An Infinitely Wise Being Listens To The Requests Of Finite And Foolish Creatures, Of Course He Will Sometimes Grant And Sometimes Refuse Them.

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.

Remember He Is The Artist And You Are Only The Picture. You Can't See It. So Quietly Submit To Be Painted---i.e., Keep Fulfilling All The Obvious Duties Of Your Station (you Really Know Quite Well Enough What They Are!), Asking Forgiveness For Each Failure And Then Leaving It Alone.you Are In The Right Way. Walk---don't Keep On Looking At It.

That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Part Of Eternal Reality.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable.

To Love You As I Should, I Must Worship God As Creator.

The Value Of The Old Testament May Be Dependant On What Seems Its Imperfection. It May Repel One Use In Order That We May Be Forced To Use It In Another Way-to Find The Word In It...to Re-live, While We Read, The Whole Jewish Experience Of God's Gradual And Graded Self-revelation, To Feel The Very Contentions Between The Word And The Human Material Through Which It Works.

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

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

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

Truth And Falsehood

Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself. He Himself Is The Fuel Our Spirits Were Designed To Burn, Or The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On. There Is No Other.

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

A Christian Is Not Someone Who Never Goes Wrong, But One Who Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Again, Because The Christ-life Is Inside Him.

[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.

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

Hail Lord, ...loose My Chains.

If Anyone Present Wishes To Make Me The Subject Of His Wit, I Am Very Much At His Service--with My Sword--whenever He Has Leisure.

Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.

Unless Thought Is Valid We Have No Reason To Believe In The Real Universe.

It Would Seem That Our Lord Finds Our Desires Not Too Strong, But Too Weak.

It Still Remains True That No Justification Of Virtue Will Enable A Man To Be Virtuous.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is. If There Are Rats In A Cellar, You Are Most Likely To See Them If You Go In Very Suddenly. But The Suddenness Does Not Create The Rats; It Only Prevents Them From Hiding. In The Same Way The Suddenness Of The Provocation Does Not Make Me Ill Tempered; It Only Shows Me What An Ill-tempered Man I Am.

Inspirational Life

Christianity Is Not A Patent Medicine. Christianity Claims To Give An Account Of Facts - To Tell You What The Real Universe Is Like. Its Account Of The Universe May Be True, Or It May Not, And Once The Question Is Really Before You, Then Your Natural Inquisitiveness Must Make You Want To Know The Answer. If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be: If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All.

I Have Discovered, Passionate Grief Does Not Link Us With The Dead But Cuts Us Off From Them. This Becomes Clearer And Clearer. It Is Just At Those Moments When I Feel Least Sorrow - Getting Into My Morning Bath Is Usually One Of Them - That H. Rushes Upon My Mind In Her Full Reality, Her Otherness. Not, As In My Worst Moments, All Foreshortened And Patheticized And Solemnized By My Miseries, But As She Is In Her Own Right. This Is Good And Tonic.

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

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.

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

Trending Author

Stokely Carmichael

Category