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To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. 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. Wrap It Carefully Round With Hobbies And Little Luxuries; Avoid All Entanglements. Lock It Up Safe In The Casket Or Coffin Of Your Selfishness. But In That Casket, Safe, Dark, Motionless, Airless, It Will Change. It Will Not Be Broken; It Will Become Unbreakable, Impenetrable, Irredeemable. To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

-C. S. Lewis

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To Love At All

C. S. Lewis

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To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. 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. Wrap It Carefully Round With Hobbies And Little Luxuries; Avoid All Entanglements. Lock It Up Safe In The Casket Or Coffin Of Your Selfishness. But In That Casket, Safe, Dark, Motionless, Airless, It Will Change. It Will Not Be Broken; It Will Become Unbreakable, Impenetrable, Irredeemable. To Love Is To Be Vulnerable.

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Those Who Would Most Scornfully Repudiate Christianity As A Mere "opiate Of The People" Have A Contempt For The Rich, That Is, For All Mankind Except The Poor.

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

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

More Like The Real Thing,' Said The Lord Digory Softly. - The Last Battle

I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog.

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I See You Are An Idiot, Whatever Else You May Be.

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And I Say Also This. I Do Not Think The Forest Would Be So Bright, Nor The Water So Warm, Nor Love So Sweet, If There Were No Danger In The Lakes.

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.

Each Day We Are Becoming A Creature Of Splendid Glory Or One Of Unthinkable Horror.

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. There Is Not One Of Them Which Will Not Make Us Into Devils If We Set It Up As An Absolute Guide. You Might Think Love Of Humanity In General Was Safe, But It Is Not. If You Leave Out Justice You Will Find Yourself Breaking Agreements And Faking Evidence In Trials "for The Sake Of Humanity", And Become In The End A Cruel And Treacherous Man.

I Wish We Didn't Live In A World Where Buying And Selling Things Seems To Have Become Almost More Important Than Either Producing Or Using Them.

All Is Summed Up In The Prayer Which A Young Female Human Is Said To Have Uttered Recently: "o God, Make Me A Normal Twentieth-century Girl!" Thanks To Our Labors, This Will Mean Increasingly: "make Me A Minx, A Moron, And A Parasite.

The Perfect Church Service Would Be The One We Were Almost Unaware Of; Our Attention Would Have Been On God. But Every Novelty Prevents This. It Fixes Our Attention On The Service Itself; And Thinking About Worship Is A Different Thing Than Worshipping ... 'tis Mad Idolatry That Makes The Service Greater Than The God.

No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.

We Shall Not Be Well So Long As We Love And Admire Anything More Than We Love And Admire God.

You'll Never Make A Good Impression On Other People Until You Stop Thinking What Sort Of Impression You Make.

The Whole Journey Was Odd And Dream-like -- The Roaring Stream, The Wet Grey Grass, The Glimmering Cliffs Which They Were Approaching, And Always The Glorious, Silently Pacing Beast Ahead.

The Command "be Ye Prfect" Is Not Idealistic Gas. Nor Is It A Command To Do The Impossible. He Said (in The Bible) That We Were "gods" And He Is Going To Make Good His Words. He Will Make Us Into A God Or Goddess, A Dazzling, Radiant, Immortal Creature...a Bright Stainless Mirror Which Reflects Back To God Perfectly.

You Die And Die And Then You Are Beyond Death.

If The Immutable Heart Can Be Grieved By The Puppets Of Its Own Making, It Is Divine Omnipotence, No Other, That Has Subjected It, Freely, And In A Humility That Passes Understanding. If The World Exists Not Chiefly That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us, Yet That Very Fact, On A Deeper Level, Is So For Our Sakes. If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

You Can Put This Another Way By Saying That While In Other Sciences The Instruments You Use Are Things External To Yourself (things Like Microscopes And Telescopes), The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred - Like The Moon Seen Through A Dirty Telescope. That Is Why Horrible Nations Have Horrible Religions: They Have Been Looking At God Through A Dirty Lens.

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.

Only The Skilled Can Judge The Skillfulness, But That Is Not The Same As Judging The Value Of The Result.

I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.

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Theology Is Like A Map. Merely Learning And Thinking About The Christian Doctrines, If You Stop There, Is Less Real And Less Exciting Than The Sort Of Thing My Friend Got In The Desert. Doctrines Are Not God: They Are Only A Kind Of Map. But That Map Is Based On The Experience Of Hundreds Of People Who Really Were In Touch With God--experiences Compared With Which Many Thrills Of Pious Feelings You And I Are Likely To Get On Our Own Are Very Elementary And Very Confused. And Secondly, If You Want To Get Any Further You Must Use The Map.

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I Will Not Be At The Mercy Of The Telephone!

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We Come To Scripture Not To Learn A Subject But To Steep Ourselves In A Person.

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.

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

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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?

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The Scotch Catechism Says That Man's Chief End Is 'to Glorify God And Enjoy Him Forever.' But We Shall Then Know That These Are The Same Thing. Fully To Enjoy Is To Glorify. In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

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Giving To The Poor Is An Essential Part Of Christian Morality.

The Holier A Man Becomes, The More He Mourns Over The Unholiness Which Remains In Him.

Hope Is One Of The Theological Virtues. This Means That A Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not (as Some Modern People Think) A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do. It Does Not Mean That We Are To Leave The Present World As It Is. If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Just Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

To Get Even Near Humility, Even For A Moment, Is Like A Drink Of Cold Water To A Man In A Desert.

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.

They Stormed And Jeered At One Another In Long Meaningless Words Of About Twenty Syllables Each.

My Own Eyes Are Not Enough For Me...i Will See Through The Eyes Of Others. Reality, Even Seen Through The Eyes Of Many Is Not Enough...i Will See What Others Have Invented. Even The Eyes Of All Humanity Are Not Enough. I Regret That The Brutes Cannot Write Books. Very Gladly Would I Learn What Face Things Present To A Mouse Or A Bee. More Gladly Still Would I Perceive The Olfactory World Charged With All The Information And Emotion It Carries For A Dog.

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.

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

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

The Next Best Thing To Being Wise Oneself Is To Live In A Circle Of Those Who Are.

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.

Catch {a Man} At The Moment When He Is Really Poor In Spirit And Smuggle Into His Mind The Gratifying Reflection, "by Jove, I'm Being Humble," And Almost Immediately Pride - Pride At His Own Humility - Will Appear.

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.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

I Am In Love And Out Of It I Will Not Go.

Positive Marriage

Love Is Never Wasted, For Its Value Does Not Rest Upon Reciprocity.

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

Every Story Of Conversion Is The Story Of A Blessed Defeat.

And The Whole Forest Would Give Itself Up To Jollification For Weeks On End.

Even When I Feared And Detested Christianity, I Was Struck By Its Essential Unity, Which, In Spite Of Its Divisions, It Has Never Lost. I Trembled On Recognizing The Same Unmistakable Aroma Coming From The Writings Of Dante And Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas And William Law.

I Fancy That Most People Who Think At All Have Done A Great Deal Of Their Thinking In The First Fourteen Years.

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'.

Always Prefer The Plain Direct Word To The Long, Vague One.

Friends Are Like Coals In A Fire - Together, They Glow; Apart, They Grow Cold.

In A Civilization Like Ours, I Feel That Everyone Has To Come To Terms With The Claims Of Jesus Christ Upon His Life, Or Else Be Guilty Of Inattention Or Of Evading The Question.

And So For A Time It Looked As If All The Adventures Were Coming To And End; But That Was Not To Be.

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If Religion Does Not Make Us Better People, It Will Make Us Very Much Worse. And Of All The Bad Men Who Have Lived, The Religious "bad Man" Is The Worst Of All.

The Discomfiture We Feel May Be Our Most Accurate Human Sensation; Reminding Us We Are Not Quite "at Home" Here.

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.

It Is That Of An Unsatisfied Desire Which Is Itself More Desirable Than Any Other Satisfaction.

Last Year, When He Had Been Staying With The Pevensies, He Had Managed To Hear Them All Talking Of Narnia And He Loved Teasing Them About It. He Thought Of Course That They Were Making It All Up; And As He Was Far Too Stupid To Make Anything Up Himself, He Did Not Approve Of That.

Believe In God Like You Believe In The Sunrise. Not Because You Can See It, But Because You Can See All It Touches.

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom, Humility The Road To Pleasure, Unity The Road To Personality.

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

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.

...here Also Forgiving Does Not Mean Excusing. Many People Seem To Think It Does. They Think That If You Ask Them To Forgive Someone Who Has Cheated Or Bullied Them You Are Trying To Make Out That There Was Really No Cheating Or Bullying. But If That Were So, There Would Be Nothing To Forgive. (this Doesn't Mean That You Must Necessarily Believe His Next Promise. It Does Mean That You Must Make Every Effort To Kill Every Taste Of Resentment In Your Own Heart - Every Wish To Humiliate Or Hurt Him Or To Pay Him Out.)

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.

Who Will Take Medicine Unless He Knows He Is In The Grip Of Disease?

There Is Something Which Unites Magic And Applied Science (technology) While Separating Them From The "wisdom" Of Earlier Ages. For The Wise Men Of Old, The Cardinal Problem Of Human Life Was How To Conform The Soul To Objective Reality, And The Solution Was Wisdom, Self-discipline , And Virtue. For The Modern, The Cardinal Problem Is How To Conform Reality To The Wishes Of Man, And The Solution Is A Technique.

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.

Nothing Less Will Shake A Man — Or At Any Rate A Man Like Me — Out Of His Merely Verbal Thinking And His Merely Notional Beliefs. He Has To Be Knocked Silly Before He Comes To His Senses. Only Torture Will Bring Out The Truth. Only Under Torture Does He Discover It Himself.

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

Oh God, God, Why Did You Take Such Trouble To Force This Creature Out Of Its Shell If It Is Now Doomed To Crawl Back -- To Be Sucked Back -- Into It?

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

When First Things Are Put First, Second Things Are Not Suppressed But Increased.

Put First Things First

First Things First

I Wonder If People Who Asked For God To Intervene In Our World, Really Know What They Are Asking. Will They Want To Be There When God Really Does Intervene?

Since It Is So Likely That (children) Will Meet Cruel Enemies, Let Them At Least Have Heard Of Brave Knights And Heroic Courage. Otherwise You Are Making Their Destiny Not Brighter But Darker.

When All The Suns And Nebulae Have Passed Away, Each One Of You Will Still Be Alive.

Friends Are Seldom Found; They Are Made.

The Promise, Made When I Am In Love, To Be True To The Beloved As Long As I Live, Commits Me To Being True Even If I Cease To Be In Love.

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

Unless I Believe In God, I Cannot Believe In Thought: So I Can Never Use Thought To Disbelieve In God.

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

Alas," Said Aslan, Shaking His Head. "it Will. Things Always Work According To Their Nature. She Has Won Her Heart's Desire; She Has Unwearying Strength And Endless Days Like A Goddess. But Length Of Days With An Evil Heart Is Only Length Of Misery And Already She Begins To Know It. All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

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.

[something] Does Not Rise To The Dignity Of Error.

Those Who Tread 'adult' As A Term Of Approval Cannot Hope To Be Considered Adult Themselves. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Along With The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

Once In Our World, A Stable Had Something In It That Was Bigger Than Our Whole World.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed.

[the Difference Between The Old And The New Education Being] In A Word, The Old Was A Kind Of Propagation-men Transmitting Manhood To Men; The New Is Merely Propaganda.

Death And Resurrection Are What The Story Is About And Had We But Eyes To See It, This Has Been Hinted On Every Page, Met Us, In Some Disguise, At Every Turn, And Even Been Muttered In Conversations Between Such Minor Characters (if They Are Minor Characters) As The Vegetables.

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

If We Ignore It The Truth That God Is Love May Slyly Come To Mean For Us The Converse, That Love Is God.

It Is Safe To Tell The Pure In Heart That They Shall See God, For Only The Pure In Heart Want To.

God Doesn't Want Something From Us. He Simply Wants Us.

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

You Find Out The Strength Of A Wind By Trying To Walk Against It, Not By Lying Down.

We Shall Draw Nearer To God, Not By Trying To Avoid The Sufferings Inherent In All Loves, But By Accepting Them And Offering Them To Him; Throwing Away All Defensive Armour. If Our Hearts Need To Be Broken, And If He Chooses This As The Way In Which They Should Break, So Be It.

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

Extraordinary Things Only Happen To Extraordinary People. Maybe It's A Sign That You've Got An Extraordinary Destiny--something Greater Than You Could've Imagined.

Extraordinary Things

Man Is To Be Understood Only In His Relationship To God.

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Walter Lippmann

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