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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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We All Want Progress,

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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I Have Been Suspected Of Being What Is Called A Fundamentalist. That Is Because I Never Regard Any Narrative As Unhistorical Simply On The Ground That It Includes The Miraculous.

I Think We Must Attack -- Wherever We Meet It -- The Nonsensical Idea That Mutually Exclusive Propositions About God Can Both Be True.

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

It Was When I Was Happiest That I Longed Most...the Sweetest Thing In All My Life Has Been The Longing...to Find The Place Where All The Beauty Came From.

Perfect Goodness Can Never Debate About The End To Be Attained, And Perfect Wisdom Cannot Debate About The Means Most Suited To Achieve It.

God Whispers In Our Pleasures, But Shouts In Our Pain.

Pain And Pleasure

These, Then, Are The Two Points I Wanted To Make. First, That Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Behave In A Certain Way, And Cannot Really Get Rid Of It. Secondly, That They Do Not In Fact Behave In That Way. They Know The Law Of Nature; They Break It. These Two Facts Are The Foundation Of All Clear Thinking About Ourselves And The Universe We Live In.

Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.

What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.

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

Do Not Imagine That If You Meet A Really Humble Man He Will Be What Most People Call "humble" Nowadays: He Will Not Be A Sort Of Greasy, Smarmy Person, Who Is Always Telling You That, Of Course, He Is A Nobody. Probably All You Will Think About Him Is That He Seemed A Cheerful, Intelligent Chap Who Took A Real Interest In What You Said To Him.

Be Sure It Is Not For Nothing That The Landlord Has Knit Our Hearts So Closely To Time And Place – To One Friend Rather Than Another And One Shire More That All The Land.

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

The Long, Dull, Monotonous Years Of Middle-aged Prosperity Or Middle-aged Adversity Are Excellent Campaigning Weather For The Devil.

Man Does Not Have A Soul. He Is A Soul. He Has A Body.

The Glory Of God, And, As Our Only Means Of Glorifying Him, The Salvation Of Human Souls, Is The Real Business Of Life.

When He Was A Young Man He Prayed Constantly For Chastity; But Years Later He Realized That While His Lips Had Been Saying 'oh Lord, Make Me Chaste,' His Heart Had Been Secretly Adding, 'but Please Don't Do It Just Yet.

Why Love If Losing Hurts So Much? We Love To Know That We Are Not Alone.

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

The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

Clearly One Must Read Every Good Book At Least Once Every Ten Years.

In Worship, God Imparts Himself To Us.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest." He Also Said: "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 50 And Beyond.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

We Were Made To Be Neither Cerebral Men Nor Visceral Men, But Men. Not Beasts Nor Angels But Men - Things At Once Rational And Animal.

Nature Never Taught Me That There Exists A God Of Glory And Of Infinite Majesty. I Had To Learn That In Other Ways. But Nature Gave The Word Glory A Meaning For Me. I Still Do Not Know Where Else I Could Have Found One.

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.

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.

We All Appear As Dunces When Feigning An Interest In Things We Care Nothing About.

If You Don't Listen To Theology, That Won't Mean You Have No Ideas About God, It Will Mean You Have A Lot Of Wrong Ones.

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

“who Are You?” One Who Has Waited Long For You To Speak.

She Looked At A Silver Birch: It Would Have A Soft, Showery Voice And Would Look Like A Slender Girl, With Hair Blown All About Her Face And Fond Of Dancing. She Looked At The Oak: He Would Be A Wizened, But Hearty, Old Man With A Frizzled Beard And Warts On His Fact And Hands, With Hair Growing Out Of The Warts. She Looked At The Beech Under Which She Was Standing. Ah! --she Would Be The Best Of All. She Would Be A Gracious Goddess, Smooth And Stately, The Lady Of The Wood.

Christianity Is A Fighting Religion.

When Pain Is To Be Born, A Little Courage Helps More Than Much Knowledge, A Little Human Sympathy More Than Much Courage, And The Least Tincture Of The Love Of God More Than All.

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

When The Most Important Things In Our Life Happen We Quite Often Do Not Know, At The Moment, What Is Going On.

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

Human Intellect Is Incurably Abstract.

Better To Be Miserable With Her Than Happy Without Her. Let Our Hearts Break Provided They Break Together. If The Voice Within Us Does Not Say This It Is Not The Voice Of Eros.

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

The Humans Live In Time But Our Enemy (god) Destines Them For Eternity.

Screwtape Letters

Something Quite Unexpected Has Happened. It Came This Morning Early. For Various Reasons, Not In Themselves At All Mysterious, My Heart Was Lighter Than It Had Been For Many Weeks. ... And Suddenly, At The Very Moment When, So Far, I Mourned H. Least, I Remembered Her Best. Indeed It Was Something (almost) Better Than Memory; An Instantaneous, Unanswerable Impression. To Say It Was Like A Meeting Would Be Going Too Far. Yet There Was That In It Which Tempts One To Use Those Words. It Was As Though The Lifting Of The Sorrow Removed A Barrier.

They Were Pretty Tired By Now Of Course; But Not What I’d Call Bitterly Tired – Only Slow And Feeling Very Dreamy And Tired As One Does When One Is Coming To The End Of A Long Day In The Open.

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal. Nations, Cultures, Arts, Civilizations--these Are Mortal, And Their Life Is To Ours As The Life Of A Gnat.

For You Will Certainly Carry Out God's Purpose, However You Act, But It Makes A Difference To You Whether You Serve Like Judas Or Like John.

Making A Difference

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did, He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is)... Continue Seeking Him With Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

Morality Or Duty Never Yet Made A Man Happy In Himself Or Dear To Others.

'useful,' And 'necessity' Was Always 'the Tyrant's Plea'.

Love Is Unselfishly Choosing For Another's Highest Good.

Relationship Advice

The Guide Sang: The New Age, The New Art, The New Ethic And Thought, And Fools Crying, Because It Has Begun It Will Continue As It Has Begun! The Wheel Runs Fast, Therefore The Wheel Will Run Faster For Ever, The Old Age Is Done, We Have New Lights And See Without The Sun. (though They Lay Flat The Mountains And Dry Up The Sea, Wilt Thou Yet Change, As Though God Were A God?)

All These Toys Were Never Intended To Possess My Heart. My True Good Is In Another World, And My Only Real Treasure Is Christ.

The Best Swordsman In The World May Be Disarmed By A Trick That's New To Him.

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

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

The Whole Difficulty Of Understanding Hell Is That The Thing To Be Understood Is So Nearly Nothing.

Humour Is...the All-consoling And...the All-excusing, Grace Of Life.

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

I Wrote This Story For You, But When I Began It I Had Not Realized That Girls Grow Quicker Than Books. As A Result You Are Already Too Old For Fairy Tales, And By The Time It Is Printed And Bound You Will Be Older Still. But Some Day You Will Be Old Enough To Start Reading Fairy Tales Again. You Can Then Take It Down From Some Upper Shelf, Dust It, And Tell Me What You Think Of It. I Shall Probably Be Too Deaf To Hear, And Too Old To Understand A Word You Say, But I Shall Still Be Your Affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.

Love Is The Great Conqueror Of Lust.

If The Universe Is So Bad...how On Earth Did Human Beings Ever Come To Attribute It To The Activity Of A Wise And Good Creator?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Friendship Is The Instrument By Which God Reveals To Each Of Us The Beauties Of Others.

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

Reality, In Fact, Is Always Something You Couldn't Have Guessed. That's One Of The Reasons I Believe Christianity. It's A Religion You Couldn't Have Guessed.

We Want, In Fact, Not So Much A Father In Heaven As A Grandfather In Heaven: A Senile Benevolence Who, As They Say, "liked To See Young People Enjoying Themselves" And Whose Plan For The Universe Was Simply That It Might Be Truly Said At The End Of Each Day, "a Good Time Was Had By All."

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.

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.

True Friends... Face In The Same Direction, Toward Common Projects, Interests, Goals.

For Jokes As Well As Justice Come In With Speech.

We Are Told That Christ Was Killed For Us, That His Death Has Washed Out Our Sins, And That By Dying He Disabled Death Itself. That Is The Formula. That Is Christianity. That Is What Has To Be Believed.

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

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

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.

To Make Christianity A Private Affair While Banishing All Privacy Is To Relegate It To The Rainbow's End Or The Greek Calends.

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.

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.

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.

It Would Be Impossible To Accept Naturalism Itself If We Really And Consistently Believed Naturalism. For Naturalism Is A System Of Thought. But For Naturalism All Thoughts Are Mere Events With Irrational Causes. It Is, To Me At Any Rate, Impossible To Regard The Thoughts Which Make Up Naturalism In That Way And, At The Same Time, Regard Them As A Real Insight Into External Reality...if It Is True, Then We Can Know No Truths. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Joy Bursts In Our Lives When We Go About Doing The Good At Hand And Not Trying To Manipulate Things And Times To Achieve Joy.

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.

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

In Justifying Cruelty To Animals We Put Ourselves Also On The Animal Level. We Choose The Jungle And Must Abide By Our Choice.

My Argument Against God Was That The Universe Seemed So Cruel And Unjust. But How Had I Got This Idea Of Just And Unjust? A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line. What Was I Comparing This Universe With When I Called It Unjust?

The Thing Is To Rely On God. The Time Will Come When You Will Regard All This Misery As A Small Price To Pay For Having Been Brought To That Dependence. Meanwhile, The Trouble Is That Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Has Yet Been Done.

Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.

Philanthropy Giving

I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.

One Of The Reasons Why It Needs No Special Education To Be A Christian Is That Christianity Is An Education Itself.

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side.

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

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

Sainthood Lies In The Habit Of Referring The Smallest Actions To God.

There Is No Good Trying To Be More Spiritual Than God. God Never Meant Man To Purely Spiritual Creature. That Is Why He Uses Material Things Like Bread And Wine To Put The New Life Into Us. We May Think This Rather Crude And Unspiritual. God Does Not: He Invented Eating. He Likes Matter. He Invented It.

We Are...a Divine Work Of Art, Something That God Is Making...something With Which He Will Not Be Satisfied Until It Has A Certain Character.

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

For His Mind Was Full Of Forlorn Hopes, Death-or-glory Charges, And Last Stands.

Dyson And Tolkien Were The Immediate Human Causes Of My Conversion. Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends By A Good Fire?

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

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.

The Beauty Of Life, Is That You Don't Have To Be Modernly Beautiful To Live It.

Has This World Been So Kind To You That You Should Leave With Regret? There Are Better Things Ahead Than Any We Leave Behind.

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

Falling In Love Is Something That Happens To Us, Being Is Love Is Something We Do. No Passion Is Self Preservatory.

Falling In Love

What We Call Man's Power Over Nature Turns Out To Be A Power Exercised By Some Men Over Other Men With Nature As Its Instrument.

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.

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.

The Proper Good Of A Creature Is To Surrender Itself To Its Creator—to Enact Intellectually, Volitionally, And Emotionally, That Relationship Which Is Given In The Mere Fact Of Its Being A Creature. When It Does So, It Is Good And Happy.

Kindness Consents Very Readily To The Removal Of Its Object – We Have All Met People Whose Kindness To Animals Is Constantly Leading Them To Kill Animals Lest They Should Suffer. Kindness, Merely As Such, Cares Not Whether Its Object Becomes Good Or Bad, Provided Only That It Escapes Suffering.

Read And Re-read--"re-reading, We Always Find A New Book.

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

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

The Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.

I Write For The Unlearned About Things In Which I Am Unlearned Myself.

Well!' Said Puddleglum, Rubbing His Hands. 'this Is Just What I Needed. If These Chaps Don't Teach Me To Take A Serious View Of Life, I Don't Know What Will.

For In Self-giving, If Anywhere, We Touch A Rhythm Not Only Of All Creation But Of All Being.

Selfishness Has Never Been Admired.

A Myth Is A Lie That Conveys A Truth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 Universe Rings True Whenever You Fairly Test It.

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

Since I Am I, I Must Make An Act Of Self-surrender, However Small Or However Easy, In Living To God Rather Than To My Self.

We Must Perpetually Try To Distinguish, However Closely They Get Entwined By The Subtle Nature Of The Facts And By The Secret Importunity Of Our Passions, Those Attitudes In A Writer Which We Can Honestly And Confidently Condemn As Real Evils, And Those Qualities In His Writing Which Simply Annoy And Offend Us As Men Of Taste.

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?

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

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

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.

When You Argue Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

He (god) Loved Us Not Because We Are Lovable, But Because He Is Love.

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.

Of Course Language Is Not An Infallible Guide, But It Contains, With All Its Defects, A Good Deal Of Stored Insight And Experience.

The People Who Keep Asking If They Can't Lead A Decent Life Without Christ, Don't Know What Life Is About; If They Did They Would Know That 'a Decent Life' Is Mere Machinery Compared With The Thing We Men Are Really Made For.

And In Truth (as I Now See) I Had The Wish To Put Off My Journey As Long As I Could. Not For Any Peril Or Labour It Might Cost; But Because I Could See Nothing In The Whole World For Me To Do Once It Was Accomplished. As Long As This Act Lay Before Me, There Was, As It Were, Some Barrier Between Me And The Dead Desert Which The Rest Of My Life Must Be.

Lucy Said, 'we're So Afraid Of Being Sent Away, Aslan. And You Have Sent Us Back Into Our Own World So Often.' 'no Fear Of That,' Said Aslan. 'have You Not Guessed?' Their Hearts Leapt, And A Wild Hope Rose Within Them. 'there Was A Real Railway Accident,' Said Aslan Softly. 'your Father And Mother And All Of You Are- As You Used To Call It In The Shadowlands- Dead. The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

Our Struggle Is--isn't It?--to Achieve And Retain Faith On A Lower Level. To Believe That There Is A Listener At All. For As The Situation Grows More And More Desperate, The Grisly Fears Intrude. Are We Only Talking To Ourselves In An Empty Universe? The Silence Is Often So Emphatic. And We Have Prayed So Much Already

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

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.

The Story Does What No Theorem Can Quite Do. It May Not Be "like Real Life" In The Superficial Sense: But It Sets Before Us An Image Of What Reality May Well Be Like At Some More Central Region.

A Proud Man Is Always Looking Down On Things And People; And, Of Course, As Long As You Are Looking Down, You Cannot See Something That Is Above You.

This Is Where Men, Even The Trustiest, Fail Us. Their Heart Is Never So Wholly Given To Any Matter But That Some Trifle Of A Meal, Or A Drink, Or A Sleep, Or A Joke, Or A Girl, May Come In Between Them And It, And Then (even If You Are A Queen) You'll Get No More Good Out Of Them Until They've Had Their Way.

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

We Treat Our Dogs As If They Were "almost Human": That Is Why They Really Become "almost Human" In The End.

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.

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.

I Don't Pray So That I Can Change God. I Pray So That God Can Change Me.

The Assumption That Things Which Have Been Conjured In The Past Will Always Be Conjured In The Guiding Principle Not Of Rational But Of Animal Behavior.

Guiding Principles

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.

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

People Who Bore One Another Should Meet Seldom; People Who Interest One Another, Often.

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

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.

Now Sir, Said The Bulldog In His Business-like Way. 'are You A Animal, Vegetable, Or Mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew

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

Are The Gods Not Just?' 'oh No, Child. What Would Become Us Us If They Were?

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

The Dangers Of Apparent Self-sufficiency Explain Why Our Lord Regards The Vices Of The Feckless And Dissipated So Much More Leniently Than The Vices That Lead To Worldly Success.

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

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

He Thinks Great Folly, Child,' Said Aslan. "this World Is Bursting With Life For These Few Days Because The Song With Which I Called It Into Life Still Hangs In The Air And Rumbles In The Ground. It Will Not Be So For Long. But I Cannot Tell That To This Old Sinner, And I Cannot Comfort Him Either; He Has Made Himself Unable To Hear My Voice. If I Spoke To Him, He Would Hear Only Growlings And Roarings. Oh, Adam's Son, How Cleverly You Defend Yourself Against All That Might Do You Good!

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

I Was At This Time Living, Like So Many Atheists Or Antitheists, In A Whirl Of Contradictions. I Maintained That God Did Not Exist. I Was Also Very Angry With God For Not Existing. I Was Equally Angry With Him For Creating A World.

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.

I Dread Specialists In Power Because They Are Specialists Speaking Outside Of Their Special Subject.

A Man Can Eat His Dinner Without Understanding Exactly How Food Nourishes Him. A Man Can Accept What Christ Has Done Without Knowing How It Works: Indeed, He Certainly Would Not Know How It Works Until He Has Accepted It.

Don't You Mind," Said Puddleglum. "there Are No Accidents. Our Guide Is Aslan; And He Was There When The Giant King Caused The Letters To Be Cut, And He Knew Already All Things That Would Come Of Them; Including This.

Christ Offers Something For Nothing: He Even Offers Everything For Nothing.

Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed.

God Is The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On.

One Of The Things That Distinguishes Man From The Other Animals Is That He Wants To Know Things, Wants To Find Out What Reality Is Like, Simply For The Sake Of Knowing. When That Desire Is Completely Quenched In Anyone, I Think He Has Become Something Less Than Human.

God, Who Foresaw Your Tribulation, Has Specially Armed You To Go Through It, Not Without Pain But Without Stain.

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.

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

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

[the Witch] Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor’s Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Start Working Backwards.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

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.

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

Hatred Obscures All Distinctions.

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

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

Daughter Of Eve From The Far Land Of Spare Oom Where Eternal Summer Reigns Around The Bright City Of War Drobe, How Would It Be If You Came And Had Tea With Me?

All Men Alike Stand Condemned, Not By Alien Codes Of Ethics, But By Their Own, And All Men Therefore Are Conscious Of Guilt.

When You Give Up A Bit Of Work Don't (unless It Is Hopelessly Bad) Throw It Away. Put It In A Drawer. It May Come In Useful Later. Much Of My Best Work, Or What I Think My Best, Is The Re-writing Of Things Begun And Abandoned Years Earlier.

It Means That Though The Witch Knew The Deep Magic, There Is A Magic Deeper Still That She Did Not Know. Her Knowledge Goes Back Only To The Dawn Of Time. But If She Could Have Looked A Little Further Back, Into The Stillness And Darkness Before Time Began, She Would Have Read There A Different Incantation. She Would Have Known That When A Willing Victim Who Had Committed No Treachery Was Killed In A Traitor's Stead, The Table Would Crack And Death Itself Would Work Backwards.

The Central Christian Belief Is That Christ's Death Has Somehow Put Us Right With God And Given Us A Fresh Start. Theories As To How It Did This Are Another Matter. A Good Many Different Theories Have Been Held As To How It Works; What All Christians Are Agreed On Is That It Does Work.

Our Passions Are Not Too Strong, They Are Too Weak. We Are Far Too Easily Pleased.

Come, Live With Me And You'll Know Me.

We're Free Narnians, Hwin And I, And I Suppose, If You're Running Away To Narnia You Want To Be One Too. In That Case Hwin Isn't Your Horse Any Longer. One Might Just As Well Say You're Her Human.

Oh Trees, Trees, Trees...wake. Don't You Remember It? Don't You Remember Me? Dryads And Hamadryads, Come Out, Come [out] To Me.

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

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.

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