Background Image

...

We Can Never Know That A Piece Of Writing Is Bad Unless We Have Begun By Trying To Read It As If It Was Very Good And Ended By Discovering That We Were Paying The Author An Undeserved Compliment.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Can Never Know

C. S. Lewis

...

We Can Never Know That A Piece Of Writing Is Bad Unless We Have Begun By Trying To Read It As If It Was Very Good And Ended By Discovering That We Were Paying The Author An Undeserved Compliment.

Views: 23271

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

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

Spying On People By Magic Is The Same As Spying On Them In Any Other Way.

Those Who Would Like The God Of Scripture To Be More Purely Ethical, Do Not Know What They Ask.

Where Men Are Forbidden To Honour A King, They Honor Millionaires, Athletes, Or Film Stars Instead; Even Famous Prostitutes Or Gangsters. For Spiritual Nature, Like Bodily Nature, Will Be Served; Deny It Food And It Will Gobble Poison.

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.

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

Talk To Me About The Truth Of Religion And I'll Listen Gladly. Talk To Me About The Duty Of Religion And I'll Listen Submissively. But Don't Come Talking To Me About The Consolations Of Religion Or I Shall Suspect That You Don't Understand.

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.

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.

People Who Know A Lot Of The Same Things Can Hardly Help Talking About Them.

Emeth Came Walking Forward Into The Open Strip Of Grass Between The Bonfire And The Stable. His Eyes Were Shining, His Face Was Solemn, His Hand Was On His Sword-hilt, And He Carried His Head High. Jill Felt Like Crying When She Looked At His Face. And Jewel Whispered In The King's Ear, "by The Lion's Mane, I Almost Love This Young Warrior, Calormene Though He Be. He Is Worthy Of A Better God Than Tash.

Prayer In The Sense Of Petition, Asking For Things, Is A Small Part Of It; Confession And Penitence Are Its Threshold, Adoration Its Sanctuary, The Presence And Vision And Enjoyment Of God Its Bread And Wine.

Where I Come From, They Don't Think Much Of Men Who Are Bossed About By Their Wives.

With The Possible Exception Of The Equator, Everything Begins Somewhere.

Exception To The Rule

Literary Experience Heals The Wound, Without Undermining The Privilege, Of Individuality.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

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

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

The Christian View Is That Men Were Created To Be In A Certain Relationship To God (if We Are In That Relation To Him, The Right Relation To One Another Will Follow Inevitably).

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.

Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man... It Is The Comparison That Makes You Proud: The Pleasure Of Being Above The Rest. Once The Element Of Competition Is Gone, Pride Is Gone.

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

I Cannot Speak For The Way God Deals With Others; I Only Know How He Deals With Me Personally.

Do I Think Well Of Myself, Think Myself A Nice Chap? Well, I Am Afraid I Sometimes Do (and Those Are, No Doubt, My Worst Moments).

He Died Not For Men, But For Each Man. If Each Man Had Been The Only Man Made, He Would Have Done No Less.

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

Further Up And Further In!

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

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?

Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

The Worst Of Sleeping Out Of Doors Is That You Wake Up So Dreadfully Early. And When You Wake Up You Have To Get Up Because The Ground Is So Hard You Are Uncomfortable. And It Makes Matters Worse If There Is Nothing But Apples For Breakfast And You Have Had Nothing But Apples For Supper The Night Before.

The Future Is Something Which Everyone Reaches At The Rate Of 60 Minutes An Hour, Whatever He Does, Whoever He Is.

In Any Fairly Large And Talkative Community Such As A University There Is Always The Danger That Those Who Think Alike Should Gravitate Together Where They Will Henceforth Encounter Opposition Only In The Emasculated Form Of Rumour That The Outsiders Say Thus And Thus. The Absent Are Easily Refuted, Complacent Dogmatism Thrives, And Differences Of Opinion Are Embittered By The Group Hostility. Each Group Hears Not The Best, But The Worst, That The Other Group Can Say.

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

And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels; That He Called Me Beloved.

All The Time The Joke Is That The Word "mine" In Its Fully Possessive Sense Cannot Be Uttered By A Human Being About Anything. In The Long Run Either [satan] Or God Will Say "mine" Of Each Thing That Exists, And Specially Of Each Man.

For The Wise Men Of Old The Cardinal Problem Had Been How To Conform The Soul To Reality. For Magic And Applied Science Alike The Problem Is How To Subdue Reality To The Wishes Of Men.

The Harder You Tried Not To Think, The More You Thought.

For Christianity Is A Fighting Religion. It Thinks God Has Made The World- That Space And Time, Heat And Cold, And All The Colors And Tastes, And All The Animals And Vegetables, Are Things That God 'made Up Out Of His Head' As A Man Makes Up A Story. But It Also Thinks That A Great Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And That God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again.

If I Had Really Cared As I Thought I Did About The Sorrows Of The World I Should Not Have Been So Overwhelmed When My Own Sorrow Came- I Thought I Trusted The Rope Until It Mattered To Me Whether It Would Bear Me, Now It Matters And I Find I Didn't.

Few Men Looked On Her Without Becoming, In A Certain Fashion, Her Lovers. But It Was The Kind Of Love That Made Them Not Less True, But Truer, To Their Own Wives.

Provided That Any Of Those Neighbours Sing Out Of Tune Or Have Boots That Squeak, Or Double Chins, Or Odd Clothes, The Patient Will Quite Easily Believe That Their Religion Must Therefore Be Somehow Ridiculous.

A Universe Whose Only Claim To Be Believed In Rests On The Validity Of Inference Must Not Start Telling Us The Inference Is Invalid.

Atheism Turns Out To Be Too Simple. If The Whole Universe Has No Meaning, We Should Never Have Found Out That It Has No Meaning.

Feeling Like The Voice She Liked Best In All The World Was Calling Her Name.

All Day I Have Been Tossed And Whirled In A Preposterous Happiness; Was It An Elf In The Blood? Or A Bird In The Brain? Or Even Part Of The Cloudily Crested, Fifty-league-long, Loud, Uplifted Wave Of A Journeying Angels Transit Over And Through My Heart?

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.

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.

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

And A Charge Of Lying Against Someone Whom You Have Always Found Truthful Is A Very Serious Thing; A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

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

We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe.

I Know Now, Lord, Why You Utter No Answer. You Are Yourself The Answer. Before Your Face Questions Die Away. What Other Answer Would Suffice?

No Soul That Seriously And Constantly Desires Joy Will Ever Miss It. Those Who Seek Find. To Those Who Knock It Is Opened.

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

A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Till You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On.

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

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 Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

Your Real, New Self (which Is Christ's And Also Yours, And Yours Just Because It Is His) Will Not Come As Long As You Are Looking For It. It Will Come When You Are Looking For Him.

Child,' Said The Lion, 'i Am Telling You Your Story, Not Hers. No One Is Told Any Story But Their Own.

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

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

There Comes A Moment When People Who Have Been Dabbling In Religion ('man's Search For God'!) Suddenly Draw Back. Supposing We Really Found Him? We Never Meant It To Come To That! Worse Still, Supposing He Had Found Us?

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.

[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.

It Is A Happy Moment When Our Desire Crosses With The Will Of Heavenly Father.

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

I Hope No One Who Reads This Book Has Been Quite As Miserable As Susan And Lucy Were That Night; But If You Have Been - If You've Been Up All Night And Cried Till You Have No More Tears Left In You - You Will Know That There Comes In The End A Sort Of Quietness. You Feel As If Nothing Is Ever Going To Happen Again.

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.

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

Christianity Does Not Involve The Belief That All Things Were Made For Man. It Does Involve The Belief That God Loves Man And For His Sake Became Man And Died.

Above All Else , The Devil Can Not Stand To Be Mocked.

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

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side. 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." All My Acts, Desires, And Thoughts Were To Be Brought Into Harmony With Universal Spirit. For The First Time I Examined Myself With A Seriously Practical Purpose. And There I Found What Appalled Me; A Zoo Of Lusts, A Bedlam Of Ambitions, A Nursery Of Fears, A Harem Of Fondled Hatreds. My Name Was Legion.

Those Who Are Enjoying Something, Or Suffering Something, Together, Are Companions. Those Who Enjoy Or Suffer One Another, Are Not.

I Desired Dragons With A Profound Desire.

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

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.

They Did Nothing Wrong Their Time Here Has Ended

Well,' Said Ransom, 'if It Is A Delusion, It's A Pretty Stubborn One.

Who Can Endure A Doctrine Which Would Allow Only Dentists To Say Whether Our Teeth Were Aching, Only Cobblers To Say Whether Our Shoes Hurt Us, And Only Governments To Tell Us Whether We Were Being Well Governed?

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World

And Yet All Loneliness, Angers, Hatreds, Envies, And Itchings That It Contains, If Rolled Into One Single Experience And Put Into The Scale Against The Least Moment Of The Joy That Is Felt By The Least In Heaven, Would Have No Weight That Could Be Registered At All. Bad Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad As Truly As Good Is Good.

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be Walking Trees. Be Talking Beasts. Be Divine Waters.

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

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

Materialism Is In Fact No Protection. Those Who Seek It In That Hope (they Are Not A Negligible Class) Will Be Disappointed. The Thing You Fear Is Impossible. Well And Good. Can You Therefore Cease To Fear It? Not Here And Now. And What Then? If You Must See Ghosts, It Is Better Not To Disbelieve In Them.

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

Miracles Are For Beginners.

You Never Know What You Can Do Until You Try, And Very Few Try Unless They Have To.

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

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.

What You Want Is Practice, Practice, Practice. It Doesn’t Matter What We Write (at Least This Is My View) At Our Age, So Long As We Write Continually As Well As We Can. I Feel That Every Time I Write A Page Either Of Prose Or Of Verse, With Real Effort, Even If It’s Thrown Into The Fire The Next Minute, I Am So Much Further On.

I Have Been Feeling Very Much Lately That Cheerful Insecurity Is What Our Lord Asks Of Us.

In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.

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

The Real Moon,if You Could Reach It And Survive It, Would In A Deep And Deadly Sense Be Just Like Anywhere Else...no Man Would Find An Abiding Strangness On The Moon Unless He Were The Sort Of Man Who Could Find It In His Own Back Garden.

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

No Doubt Those Who Really Founded Modern Science Were Usually Those Whose Love Of Truth Exceeded Their Love Of Power.

Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, 'no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It,' Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.

Nothing Can Seem Extraordinary Until You Have Discovered What Is Ordinary.

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?

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

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

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

The World Was Made Partly That There May Be Prayer; Partly That Our Prayers Might Be Answered.

The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.

If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing, Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

Whenever All Men Are...hastening To Be Slaves Or Tyrants We Make Liberalism The Prime Bogey.

Screwtape Letters

If We Let Ourselves, We Shall Always Be Waiting For Some Distraction Or Other To End Before We Can Really Get Down To Our Work. The Only People Who Achieve Much Are Those Who Want Knowledge So Badly That They Seek It While The Conditions Are Still Unfavorable. Favorable Conditions Never Come.

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

The Castle Of Cair Paravel On Its Little Hill Towered Up Above Them; Before Them Were The Sands, With Rocks And Little Pools Of Salt Water, And Seaweed, And The Smell Of The Sea And Long Miles Of Bluish-green Waves Breaking For Ever And Ever On The Beach. And Oh, The Cry Of The Seagulls! Have You Ever Heard It? Can You Remember?

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

Wouldn't It Be Dreadful If Some Day In Our Own World, At Home, Men Start Going Wild Inside, Like The Animals Here, And Still Look Like Men, So That You'd Never Know Which Were Which.

Actually It Seems To Me That One Can Hardly Say Anything Either Bad Enough Or Good Enough About Life.

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

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.

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

And He [god] And You Are Two Things Of Such A Kind That If You Really Get Into Any Kind Of Touch With Him You Will, In Fact, Be Humble--delightedly Humble, Feeling The Infinite Relief Of Having For Once Got Rid Of All The Silly Nonsense About Your Own Dignity Which Has Made You Restless And Unhappy All Your Life.

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

I Think We Must Fully Face The Fact That When Christianity Does Not Make A Man Very Much Better, It Makes Him Very Much Worse... Conversion May Make Of One Who Was, If No Better, No Worse Than An Animal, Something Like A Devil.

He Has Room For People With Very Little Sense, But He Wants Everyone To Use What Sense They Have.

One Flesh. Or If You Prefer, One Ship. The Starboard Engine Has Gone. I, The Port Engine, Must Chug Along Somehow Till We Make Harbour. Or Rather, Till The Journey Ends.

God Wants A Child's Heart And A Grownup's Head.

The Books Or The Music In Which We Thought The Beauty Was Located Will Betray Us If We Trust To Them; It Was Not In Them, It Only Came Through Them,and What Came Through Them Was Longing. These Things—the Beauty, The Memory Of Our Own Past—are Good Images Of What We Really Desire; But If They Are Mistaken For The Thing Itself They Turn Into Dumb Idols,breaking The Hearts Of Their Worshippers. For They Are Not The Thing Itself; They Are Only The Scent Of A Flower We Have Not Found, The Echo Of A Tune We Have Not Heard, News From A Country We Have Never Yet Visited.

If God Were A Kantian, Who Would Not Have Us Till We Came To Him From The Purest And Best Motives, Who Could Be Saved?

The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

Five Senses; An Incurably Abstract Intellect; A Haphazardly Selective Memory; A Set Of Preconceptions And Assumptions So Numerous That I Can Never Examine More Than A Minority Of Them - Never Become Even Conscious Of Them All.

Faith In Christ Is The Only Thing To Save You From Despair.

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

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

At The End Of All Things, The Blessed Will Say, 'we Never Lived Anywhere But In Heaven.'

The Very Power Of [textbook Writers] Depends On The Fact That They Are Dealing With A Boy: A Boy Who Thinks He Is ‘doing’ His ‘english Prep’ And Has No Notion That Ethics, Theology, And Politics Are All At Stake. It Is Not A Theory They Put Into His Mind, But An Assumption, Which Ten Years Hence, Its Origin Forgotten And Its Presence Unconscious, Will Condition Him To Take One Side In A Controversy Which He Has Never Recognized As A Controversy At All.

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

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

If You Are Really A Product Of A Materialistic Universe, How Is It That You Don't Feel At Home There?

Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.

Friendship Love

Give Up Yourself, And You Will Find Your Real Self. Lose Your Life And You Will Save It.

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Of Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You. It Is Easy To Say You Believe A Rope To Be Strong And Sound As Long As You Are Merely Using It To Cord A Box. But Suppose You Had To Hang By That Rope Over A Precipice. Wouldn't You Then First Discover How Much You Really Trusted It?

Inner Silence Is For Our Race A Difficult Achievement. There Is A Chattering Part Of The Mind Which Continues, Until It Is Corrected, To Chatter On Even In The Holiest Places.

But In Reading Great Literature I Become A Thousand Men And Yet Remain Myself. Like The Night Sky In The Greek Poem, I See With A Myriad Eyes, But It Is Still I Who See. Here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

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.

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.

God Has No Needs. Human Love, As Plato Teaches Us, Is The Child Of Poverty – Of Want Or Lack; It Is Caused By A Real Or Supposed Goal In Its Beloved Which The Lover Needs And Desires. But God's Love, Far From Being Caused By Goodness In The Object, Causes All The Goodness Which The Object Has, Loving It First Into Existence, And Then Into Real, Though Derivative, Lovability. God Is Goodness. He Can Give Good, But Cannot Need Or Get It. In That Sense , His Love Is, As It Were, Bottomlessly Selfless By Very Definition; It Has Everything To Give, And Nothing To Receive.

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

The Opposite Of Love Is Not Hate, But Power

God Will Look To Every Soul Like Its First Love Because He Is Its First Love.

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.

Scripture Itself Is Not Systematic; The New Testament Shows The Greatest Variety. God Has Shown Us That He Can Use Any Instrument. Balaam's Ass, You Remember, Preached A Very Effective Sermon In The Midst Of His 'hee-haws.'

We Do Know That No Person Can Be Saved Except Through Christ. We Do Not Know That Only Those Who Know Him Can Be Saved By Him.

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

My Friendship You Shall Have, Leanred Man," Piped Reepicheep. "and Any Dwarf--or Giant---in The Army Who Does Not Give You Good Language Shall Have My Sword To Reckon With.

I Would Not Know How To Advise A Man How To Write. It Is A Matter Of Talent And Interest. I Believe He Must Be Strongly Moved If He Is To Become A Writer.

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

You Thought You Were Being Made Into A Decent Little Cottage But He Is Building A Palace. He Intends To Come & Live In It Himself

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.

We Must Lay Before Him What Is In Us; Not What Ought To Be In Us.

As Image And Apprehension Are In Organic Unity, So, For A Christian, Are Human Body And Human Soul.

For In Calormen, Story-telling (whether The Stories Are True Or Made Up) Is A Thing You're Taught, Just As English Boys And Girls Are Taught Essay-writing. The Difference Is That People Want To Hear The Stories, Whereas I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Wanted To Read The Essays.

When There Came A Sound That I'd Never Heard The Like Of In All My Born Days. Eh, I Won't Forget That. The Whole Air Was Full Of It, Loud As Thunder But Far Longer, Cool And Sweet As Music Over Water But Strong Enough To Shake The Woods. And I Said To Myself, 'if That's Not The Horn, Call Me A Rabbit.

The Moment Good Taste Knows Itself, Some Of Its Goodness Is Lost.

How Monotonously Alike All The Great Tyrants And Conquerors Have Been: How Gloriously Different Are The Saints.

Besides Being Complicated, Reality, In My Experience, Is Usually Odd. It Is Not Neat, Not Obvious, Not What You Expect.

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.

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.

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

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

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

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

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

The Christians Say That God Has Done Miracles. The Modern World, Even When It Believes In God, And Even When It Has See The Defenselessness Of Nature, Does Not. It Thinks God Would Not Do That Sort Of Thing.

Remember, He Is Not, Like You, A Pure Spirit. Never Having Been A Human (oh That Abominable Advantage Of The Enemy's) You Don't Realize How Enslaved They Are To The Pressure Of The Ordinary.

He's Not Safe, But He's Good (referring To Aslan, The Lion, In The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe)

Education Is Only The Most Fully Conscious Of The Channels Whereby Each Generation Influences The Next.

Here The Whole World (stars, Water, Air, And Field, And Forest, As They Were Reflected In A Single Mind) Like Cast Off Clothes Was Left Behind In Ashes, Yet With Hopes That She, Re-born From Holy Poverty, In Lenten Lands, Hereafter May Resume Them On Her Easter Day." (epitaph For Joy Gresham)

But Why,... If You Have A Serious Comment To Make On The Real Life Of Men, Must You Do It By Talking About A Phantasmagoric Never-never Land Of Your Own? Because, I Take It, One Of The Main Things The Author Wants To Say Is That The Real Life Of Men Is Of That Mythical And Heroic Quality.

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

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

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

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

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

Here At Last Is The Thing I Was Made For.

There Have Been Men Before Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself, As If The Good Lord Had Nothing To Do But To Exist. There Have Been Some Who Were So Preoccupied With Spreading Christianity That They Never Gave A Thought To Christ.

We Do Not See Into Men’s Hearts. We Cannot Judge, And Are Indeed Forbidden To Judge.

Keep Clear Of Psychiatrists Unless You Know That They Are Also Christians. Otherwise They Start With The Assumption That Your Religion Is An Illusion And Try To 'cure' It: And This Assumption They Make Not As Professional Psychologists But As Amateur Philosophers.

Shut Your Mouth; Open Your Eyes And Ears.

Love Is Something More Stern And Splendid Than Mere Kindness.

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

Sleeping On A Dragon's Hoard With Greedy, Dragonish Thoughts In His Heart, He Had Become A Dragon Himself.

When Once A Man Is Launched On Such An Adventure As This, He Must Bid Farewell To Hopes And Fears, Otherwise Death Or Deliverance Will Both Come Too Late To Save His Honor And His Reason. Ho, My Beauties!

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.

Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

I Wish I Were Younger. What Inclines Me Now To Think You May Be Right In Regarding [evolution] As The Central And Radical Lie In The Whole Web Of Falsehood That Now Governs Our Lives Is Not So Much Your Arguments Against It As The Fanatical And Twisted Attitudes Of Its Defenders.

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

In A Word, We May Reasonably Hope For The Virtual Abolition Of Education When I'm As Good As You Has Fully Had Its Way. All Incentives To Learn And All Penalties For Not Learning Will Vanish.the Few Who Might Want To Learn Will Be Prevented; Who Are They To Overtop Their Fellows? And Anyway The Teachers-or Should I Say, Nurses?-will Be Far Too Busy Reassuring The Dunces And Patting Them On The Back To Waste Any Time On Real Teaching. We Shall No Longer Have To Plan And Toil To Spread Imperturable Conceit And Incurable Ignorance Among Men. The Little Vermin Themselves Will Do It For Us.

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.

Trending Author

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Richard Brautigan

Category