Background Image

...

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.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

To Live His Life

C. S. Lewis

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

For The Power Of Man To Make Himself What He Pleases Means... The Power Of Some Men To Make Other Men What They Please.

To Be Religious Is To Have One's Attention Fixed On God And On One's Neighbour In Relation To God.

Man Must Endure His Going Hence.

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.

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

The Mold In Which A Key Is Made Would Be A Strange Thing, If You Had Never Seen A Key: And The Key Itself A Strange Thing If You Had Never Seen A Lock. Your Soul Has A Curious Shape Because It Is A Hollow Made To Fit A Particular Swelling In The Infinite Contours Of The Divine Substance, Or A Key To Unlock One Of The Doors In The House With Many Mansions. 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.

If You Make The Same Guess Often Enough It Ceases To Be A Guess And Becomes A Scientific Fact. This Is The Inductive Method.

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.

All That Are In Hell, Choose It. Without That Self-choice There Could Be No Hell.

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

The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

The First Thing To Get Clear About Christian Morality Between Man And Man Is That In This Department Christ Did Not Come To Teach Any Brand New Morality. The Golden Rule Of The New Testament (do As You Would Be Done By) Is A Summing Up Of What Everyone, At Bottom, Had Always Known To Be Right.

I Am Suffering Incessant Temptations To Uncharitable Thoughts At Present; One Of Those Black Moods In Which Nearly All One's Friends Seem To Be Selfish Or Even False. And How Terrible That There Should Be Even A Kind Of Pleasure In Thinking Evil.

The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One - The Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts.

Thought Provoking

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gift.

A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading.

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

If There Ever Was A Time That Nothing Existed, Then Nothing Would Exist Now

Because We Love Something Else More Than This World, We Love Even This World More Than Those Who Know No Other.

I Do Not Doubt That If The Paradisal Man Could Now Appear Among Us, We Should Regard Him As An Utter Savage, A Creature To Be Exploited Or, At Best, Patronised. Only One Or Two, And Those The Holiest Among Us, Would Glance A Second Time At The Naked, Shaggy-bearded, Slow Spoken Creature: But They, After A Few Minutes, Would Fall At His Feet.

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

Screwtape Letters

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

Afflictions Are... If We Can So Take Them, Our Share In The Passion Of Christ

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

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.

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

If We Cut Up Beasts Simply Because They Cannot Prevent Us And Because We Are Backing Our Own Side In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only Logical To Cut Up Imbeciles, Criminals, Enemies, Or Capitalists For The Same Reasons.

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.

The Difference [god's] Timelessness Makes Is That This Now (which Slips Away From You Even As You Say The Word Now) Is For Him Infinite.

Be Sure That The Ins And Outs Of Your Individuality Are No Mystery To Him; And One Day They Will No Longer Be A Mystery To You.

He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Pity Was Meant To Be A Spur That Drives Joy To Help Misery. But It Can Be Used The Wrong Way Round. It Can Be Used For A Kind Of Blackmailing. Those Who Choose Misery Can Hold Joy Up To Ransom, By Pity.

I#pray Because The Need Flows Out Of Me All The Time-walking And Sleeping. It Does Not Change #‎ God - It Changes Me.

Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

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.

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?

Creatures Are Not Born With Desires Unless Satisfaction For Those Desires Exists. A Baby Feels Hunger: Well, There Is Such A Thing As Food. A Duckling Wants To Swim: Well, There Is Such A Thing As Water...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.

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

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

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.

For The Church Is Not A Human Society Of People United By Their Natural Affinities But The Body Of Christ, In Which All Members, However Different, (and He Rejoices In Their Differences And By No Means Wishes To Iron Them Out) Must Share The Common Life, Complementing And Helping One Another Precisely By Their Differences.

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

One Road Leads Home And A Thousand Roads Lead Into The Wilderness.

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.

And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?

Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Believe In A Certain Way, And Can't Really Get Rid Of It.

It's Like The Sound Of A Chuckle In The Darkness. The Sense That Some Shattering And Disarming Simplicity Is The Real Answer.

I Was The Lion Who Forced You To Join With Aravis. I Was The Cat Who Comforted You Among The Houses Of The Dead. I Was The Lion Who Drove The Jackals From You While You Slept. I Was The Lion Who Gave The Horses The New Strength Of Fear For The Last Mill So That You Should Reach King Lune In Time. And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

When Christ Died, He Died For You Individually Just As Much As If You Had Been The Only Person In The World.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Holiness Is Irresistible. If Even 10% Of The World's Population Had It The Whole World Would Be Converted And Happy Before The Year's End.

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

Mere Improvement Is Not Redemption, Though Redemption Always Improves People

The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It, While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him.

Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly. For All That Can Be Shaken Will Be Shaken And Only The Unshakeable Remains.

I Believe That Many Who Find That "nothing Happens" When They Sit Down, Or Kneel Down, To A Book Of Devotion, Would Find That The Heart Sings Unbidden While They Are Working Their Way Through A Tough Bit Of Theology With A Pipe In Their Teeth And A Pencil In Their Hand.

She Remembered, As Every Sensible Person Does, That You Should Never Never Shut Yourself Up In A Wardrobe.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms.

Whenever We Find That Our Religious Life Is Making Us Feel That We Are Good - Above All, That We Are Better Than Someone Else - I Think We May Be Sure That We Are Being Acted On, Not By God, But By The Devil.

There Is No Neutral Ground In The Universe. Every Square Inch, Every Split Second Is Claimed By God, And Counterclaimed By Satan.

Some People Feel Guilty About Their Anxieties And Regard Them As A Defect Of Faith But They Are Afflictions, Not Sins. Like All Afflictions, They Are, If We Can So Take Them, Our Share In The Passion Of Christ.

We Have Not, In Fact, Proved That Science Excludes Miracles: We Have Only Proved That The Question Of Miracles, Like Innumerable Other Questions, Excludes Laboratory Treatment.

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.

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?

If Nothing In This World Satisfies Me, Perhaps It Is Because I Was Made For Another World.

The Son Of God Became A Man To Enable Men To Become Sons Of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis

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

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

We Are Not Meant To Be Perpetually Solemn: We Must Play.

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

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.

Novelty May Fix Our Attention Not Even On The Service But On The Celebrant. You Know What I Mean. Try As One May To Exclude It, The Question "what On Earth Is He Up To Now?" Will Intrude. It Lays One's Devotion Waste. There Is Really Some Excuse For The Man Who Said, "i Wish They'd Remember That The Charge To Peter Was Feed My Sheep; Not Try Experiments On My Rats, Or Even, Teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks.

We May Not Be Able To Get Certainty, But We Can Get Probability, And Half A Loaf Is Better Than No Bread.

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.

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

Men Propound Mathematical Theorems In Besieged Cities, Conduct Metaphysical Arguments In Condemned Cells, Make Jokes On The Scaffold, Discuss A New Poem While Advancing To The Walls Of Quebec, And Comb Their Hair At Thermopylae. This Is Not Panache; It Is Our Nature.

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.

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.

Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.

The Stamp Of The Saint Is That He Can Waive His Own Rights And Obey The Lord Jesus.

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.

An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.

A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.

My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.

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.

Perhaps Your Own Reiterated Cries Deafen You To The Voice You Hoped To Hear

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

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung And Possibly Broken. If You Want To Make Sure Of Keeping It Intact You Must Give It To No One, Not Even An Animal.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.

Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

How Little People Know Who Think That Holiness Is Dull... When One Meets The Real Thing, It's Irresistible!

Now We Cannot...discover Our Failure To Keep God's Law Except By Trying Our Very Hardest (and Then Failing). Unless We Really Try, Whatever We Say There Will Always Be At The Back Of Our Minds The Idea That If We Try Harder Next Time We Shall Succeed In Being Completely Good. Thus, In One Sense, The Road Back To God Is A Road Of Moral Effort, Of Trying Harder And Harder. But In Another Sense It Is Not Trying That Is Ever Going Tobring Us Home. All This Trying Leads Up To The Vital Moment At Which You Turn To God And Say, "you Must Do This. I Can't.

A Centaur Has A Man-stomach And A Horse-stomach. And Of Course Both Want Breakfast. So First Of All He Has Porridge And Pavenders And Kidneys And Bacon And Omlette And Cold Ham And Toast And Marmalade And Coffee And Beer. And After That He Tends To The Horse Part Of Himself By Grazing For An Hour Or So And Finishing Up With A Hot Mash, Some Oats, And A Bag Of Sugar. That's Why It's Such A Serious Thing To Ask A Centaur To Stay For The Weeekend. A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

The Poison Was Brewed In These West Lands But It Has Spat Itself Everywhere By Now. However Far You Went You Would Find The Machines, The Crowded Cities, The Empty Thrones, The False Writings, The Barren Beds: Men Maddened With False Promises And Soured With True Miseries, Worshipping The Iron Works Of Their Own Hands, Cut Off From Earth Their Mother And From The Father In Heaven. You Might Go East So Far The East Became West And You Returned To Britain Across The Great Ocean, But Even So You Would Not Have Come Out Anywhere Into The Light. The Shadow Of One Dark Wing Is Over All Tellus.

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

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.

The Process Of Growing Up Is To Be Valued For What We Gain, Not For What We Lose.

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.

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.

Look For Yourself, And You Will Find In The Long Run Only Hatred, Loneliness, Despair, Rage, Ruin, And Decay. But Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

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

Sometimes It Is Hard Not To Say, 'god Forgive God.' Sometimes It Is Hard To Say So Much. But If Our Faith Is True, He Didn't. He Crucified Him.

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

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not.

If I, Being What I Am, Can Consider That I Am In Some Sense A Christian, Why Should The Different Vices Of Those People In The Next Pew Prove That Their Religion Is Mere Hypocrisy And Convention?

Aristotle Said That Some People Were Only Fit To Be Slaves. I Do Not Contradict Him. But I Reject Slavery Because I See No Men Fit To Be Masters.

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

The World Is So Much Larger Than I Thought. I Thought We Went Along Paths--but It Seems There Are No Paths. The Going Itself Is The Path.

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven. Our Merriment Must Be Between People Who Take Each Other Seriously.

I Can Answer That Only By Hearsay, Returned The Guide, For Pain Is A Secret Which He Has Shared With Your Race And Not With Mine; And You Would Find It As Hard To Explain Suffering To Me As I Would Find It To Reveal To You The Secrets Of The Mountain People. But Those Who Know Best Say This, That Any Liberal Man Would Choose The Pain Of This Desire, Even For Ever, Rather Than The Peace Of Feeling It No Longer; And That Though The Best Thing Is To Have, The Next Best Is To Want, And The Worst Of All Is Not To Want.

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

I Believe That There Are Too Many Practitioners In The Church, Who Are Not Believers.

Disobedience To Conscience Is Voluntary; Bad Poetry, On The Other Hand, Is Usually Not Made On Purpose.

The Psalmists In Telling Everyone To Praise God Are Doing What All Men Do When They Speak Of What They Care About.

You All Know," Said The Guide, "that Security Is Mortals' Greatest Enemy.

Virtue - Even Attempted Virtue - Brings Light; Indulgence Brings Fog.

In The Truest Sense, Christian Pilgrims Have The Best Of Both Worlds. We Have Joy Whenever This World Reminds Us Of The Next, And We Take Solace Whenever It Does Not.

You Have Not Chosen One Another, But I Have Chosen You For One Another.

Christian Friends

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.

Is It Easy To Love God' Asks An Old Author. 'it Is Easy,' He Replies, 'to Those Who Do It.' I Have Included Two Graces Under The Word Charity. But God Can Give A Third. He Can Awake In Man, Towards Himself, A Supernatural Appreciative Love. This Is Of All Gifts The Most To Be Desired. Here, Not In Our Natural Loves, Nor Even In Ethics, Lies The True Centre Of All Human And Angelic Life. With This All Things Are Possible.

As Long As This Deliberate Refusal To Understand Things From Above, Even Where Such Understanding Is Possible, Continues, It Is Idle To Talk Of Any Final Victory Over Materialism.

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.

The Man Who Truly And Disinterestedly Enjoys Any One Thing In The World, For Its Own Sake, And Without Caring Two-pence What Other People Say About It, Is By That Very Fact Forewarmed Against Some Of Our Subtlest Modes Of Attack.

That Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporal Sufferring, "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.

Don't Shine So That Others Can See You. Shine So That Through You, Others Can See Him.

Surely Arrested Development Consists Not In Refusing To Lose Old Things But In Failing To Add New Things.

Tribulations Cannot Cease Until God Either Sees Us Remade Or Sees That Our Remaking Is Now Hopeless.

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

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.

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

Well, You Know How It Feels If You Begin Hoping For Something That You Want Desperately Badly; You Almost Fight Against The Hope Because It Is Too Good To Be True; You've Been Disappointed So Often Before.

Hoping For Something

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

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

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

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

It Is Usual To Speak In A Playfully Apologetic Tone About One's Adult Enjoyment Of What Are Called 'children's Books.' I Think The Convention A Silly One. 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-except, Of Course, Books Of Information. The Only Imaginative Works We Ought To Grow Out Of Are Those Which It Would Have Been Better Not To Have Read At All. A Mature Palate Will Probably Not Much Care For Crème De Menthe: But It Ought Still To Enjoy Bread And Butter And Honey.

Selfishness Has Never Been Admired.

In The Long Run The Answer To All Those Who Object To The Doctrine Of Hell, Is Itself A Question: What Are You Asking God To Do? To Wipe Out Their Past Sins And, At All Costs, To Give Them A Fresh Start, Smoothing Every Difficulty And Offering Every Miraculous Help? But He Has Done So, On Calvary. To Forgive Them? They Will Not Be Forgiven. To Leave Them Alone? Alas, I Am Afraid That Is What He Does.

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.

In Your Life You Meet People. Some You Never Think About Again. Some, You Wonder What Happened To Them. There Are Some That You Wonder If They Ever Think About You. And Then There Are Some That You Wish You Never Have To Think About Again. But You Do.

I Didn’t Go To Religion To Make Me Happy. I Always Knew A Bottle Of Port Would Do That. If You Want A Religion To Make You Feel Really Comfortable, I Certainly Don’t Recommend Christianity.

Christian Inspirational

When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Them.

This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

I Do Not Know Why There Is This Difference, But I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait. When You Do Enter Your Room, You Will Find That The Long Wait Has Done You Some Kind Of Good Which You Would Not Have Had Otherwise. But You Must Regard It As Waiting, Not As Camping. You Must Keep On Praying For Light: And Of Course, Even In The Hall, You Must Begin Trying To Obey The Rules Which Are Common To The Whole House. And Above All You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Paneling.

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

Any Patch Of Sunlight In A Wood Will Show You Something About The Sun Which You Could Never Get From Reading Books On Astronomy. These Pure And Spontaneous Pleasures Are ‘patches Of Godlight’ In The Woods Of Our Experience.

All Your Life An Unattainable Ecstasy Has Hovered Just Beyond The Grasp Of Your Consciousness. The Day Is Coming When You Will Wake To Find, Beyond All Hope, That You Have Attained It, Or Else, That It Was Within Your Reach And You Have Lost It Forever.

What Assurance Have We That Our Masters Will Or Can Keep The Promise Which Induced Us To Sell Ourselves? Let Us Not Be Deceived By Phrases About 'man Taking Charge Of His Own Destiny'. All That Can Really Happen Is That Some Men Will Take Charge Of The Destiny Of The Others. They Will Be Simply Men; None Perfect; Some Greedy, Cruel And Dishonest. The More Completely We Are Planned The More Powerful They Will Be. Have We Discovered Some New Reason Why, This Time, Power Should Not Corrupt As It Has Done Before?

I Think It Very Wrong To Pray For People While They Are In Distress And Then Not To Continue Praying, Now With Thanksgiving, When They Are Relieved.

Pooh! Grown-ups Are Always Thinking Of Uninteresting Explanations.

Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. Evil Is A Parasite, Not An Original Thing.

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

A Society In Which Conjugal Infidelity Is Tolerated Must Always Be In The Long Run A Society Adverse To Women.

Until You Have Given Up Yourself To Him, You Will Not Have A Real Self.

There Are Two Kinds Of Love: We Love Wise And Kind And Beautiful People Because We Need Them, But We Love (or Try To Love) Stupid And Disagreeable People Because They Need Us. This Second Kind Is The More Divine Because That Is How God Loves Us: Not Because We Are Lovable But Because He Is Love, Not Because He Needs To Receive But He Delights To Give.

A Man Can't Be Taken To Hell, Or Sent To Hell: You Can Only Get There On Your Own Steam.

In Silence And In Meditation On The Eternal Truths, I Hear The Voice Of God Which Excites Our Hearts To Greater Love.

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.

Golly,' Said Edmund Under His Breath, 'he's A Retired Star.

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

Pain Plants The Flag Of Truth Within A Rebel Fortress.

It Is By Human Avarice Or Human Stupidity, Not By The Churlishness Of Nature, That We Have Poverty And Overwork.

There Is One Vice Of Which No Man In The World Is Free; Which Every One In The World Loathes When He Sees It In Someone Else; And Of Which Hardly Any People, Except Christians, Ever Imagine That They Are Guilty Themselves. […] There Is No Fault Which Makes A Man More Unpopular, And No Fault Which We Are More Unconscious Of In Ourselves.[…]the Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility.

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.

Autumn Is Really The Best Of The Seasons

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

Telling The Truth

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

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

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

The 'frankness' Of People Sunk Below Shame Is A Very Cheap Frankness.

Write About What Really Interests You, Whether It Is Real Things Or Imaginary Things, And Nothing Else. (notice This Means That If You Are Interested Only In Writing You Will Never Be A Writer, Because You Will Have Nothing To Write About...)

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

The Natural Life In Each Of Us Is Something Self-centred, Something That Wants To Be Petted And Admired, To Take Advantage Of Other Lives, To Exploit The Whole Universe.

The Monstrosity Of Sexual Intercourse Outside Marriage Is That Those Who Indulge In It Are Trying To Isolate One Kind Of Union (the Sexual) From All The Other Kinds Of Union Which Were Intended To Go Along With It And Make Up The Total Union.

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

Peter Did Not Feel Very Brave; Indeed, He Felt He Was Going To Be Sick. But That Made No Difference To What He Had To Do.

For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

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.

My Own Idea, For What It Is Worth, Is That All Sadness Which Is Not Either Arising From The Repentance Of A Concrete Sin And Hastening Towards Concrete Amendment Or Restitution, Or Else Arising From Pity And Hastening To Active Assistance, Is Simply Bad; And I Think We All Sin By Needlessly Disobeying The Apostolic Injunction To 'rejoice' As Much As By Anything Else. Humility, After The First Shock, Is A Cheerful Virtue.

An Ulster Scot May Come To Disbelieve In God, But Not To Wear His Weekday Clothes On The Sabbath.

You Are Certainly Under The Guidance Of The Holy Ghost Or You Wouldn't Have Come Where You Now Are.

True Friends Don’t Spend Time Gazing Into Each Other’s Eyes. They May Show Great Tenderness Towards Each Other But They Face In The Same Direction - Toward Common Projects, Goals - Above All, Towards A Common Lord.

Whether We Like It Or Not, God Intends To Give Us What We Need, Not What We Now Think We Want

It Is Not Enough To Want To Get Rid Of One’s Sins, We Also Need To Believe In The One Who Saves Us From Our Sins.

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.

You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

Edmund, Who Was Becoming A Nastier Person Every Minute, Thought That He Had Scored A Great Success, And Went On At Once To Say, 'there She Goes Again. What's The Matter With Her?

Many Thousands Of People Have Had The Experience Of Finding The First Friend, And It Is None The Less A Wonder; As Great A Wonder (pace The Novelists) As First Love, Or Even Greater.

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

Good And Evil Both Increase At Compound Interest. That Is Why The Little Decisions You And I Make Every Day Are Of Such Infinite Importance. 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. An Apparently Trivial Indulgence In Lust Or Anger Today Is The Loss Of A Ridge Or Railway Line Or Bridgehead From Which The Enemy May Launch An Attack Otherwise Impossible.

Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectations And Memory.

In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.

Every Christian Would Agree That A Man's Spiritual Health Is Exactly Proportional To His Love For God.

Trending Author

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Category