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We Come To Scripture Not To Learn A Subject But To Steep Ourselves In A Person.
-C. S. Lewis
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We Come To Scripture

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

Understanding the Quote: "we come to scripture not to learn a subject but to steep..."

This quote by C. S. Lewis reflects deeply on the theme of scripture. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Scripture, Persons, Subjects, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how C. S. Lewis interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis is celebrated for insightful thoughts on scripture and persons. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Scripture
Persons
Subjects
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Christianity Asserts That Every Individual Human Being Is Going To Live For Ever, And This Must Be Either True Or False. Now There Are A Good Many Things Which Would Not Be Worth Bothering About If I Were Going To Live Only Seventy Years, But Which I Had Better Bother About Very Seriously If I Am Going To Live For Ever.
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I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.
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Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.
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I Believe That There Are Too Many Accommodating Preachers... Jesus Christ Did Not Say "go Into The World And Tell The World That It Is Quite Right." The Gospel Is Something Completely Different. In Fact, It Is Directly Opposed To The World.
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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.
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Grief ... Gives Life A Permanently Provisional Feeling. It Doesn't Seem Worth Starting Anything. I Can't Settle Down. I Yawn, I Fidget, I Smoke Too Much. Up Till This I Always Had Too Little Time. Now There Is Nothing But Time. Almost Pure Time, Empty Successiveness.
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The Fundamental Laws Are In The Long Run Merely Statements That Every Event Is Itself And Not Some Different Event.
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Being In Love Is A Good Thing, But It Is Not The Best Thing. There Are Many Things Below It, But There Are Also Things Above It. You Cannot Make It The Basis Of A Whole Life. It Is A Noble Feeling, But It Is Still A Feeling. Now No Feeling Can Be Relied On To Last In Its Full Intensity, Or Even To Last At All. Knowledge Can Last, Principles Can Last, Habits Can Last; But Feelings Come And Go.
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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.
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Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal.
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The Descent To Hell Is Easy And Those Who Begin By Worshipping Power, Soon Worship Evil.
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Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant To Satisfy.
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If God Is Satisfied With The Work, The Work May Be Satisfied With Itself.
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When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The World-old, World-wide Religio Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft. Protestantism,in Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes. Catholicism Is Accused Of Being Too Much Like All The Other Religions; Protestantism Of Being Insufficiently Like A Religion At All. Hence Plato, With His Transcendent Forms, Is The Doctor Of Protestants; Aristotle, With His Immanent Forms, The Doctor Of Catholics.
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Her Face Was Working And Twitching With Passion, But His Looked Up At The Sky, Still Quiet, Neither Angry Nor Afraid, But A Little Sad.
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When You Are Not Feeling Particularly Friendly But Know You Ought To Be, The Best Thing You Can Do, Very Often, Is To Put On A Friendly Manner And Behave As If You Were A Nicer Person Than You Actually Are. And In A Few Minutes, As We Have All Noticed, You Will Be Really Feeling Friendlier Than You Were.
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If Naturalism Were True Then All Thoughts Whatever Would Be Wholly The Result Of Irrational Causes. It Cuts Its Own Throat.
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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.
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If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.
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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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God Has Landed On This Enemy-occupied World In Human Form...the Perfect Surrender And Humiliation Was Undergone By Christ: Perfect Because He Was God, Surrender And Humiliation Because He Was Man.
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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.
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You Can Give The Devil Too Much Or Too Little Attention.
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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.
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Affection Is Responsible For Nine-tenths Of Whatever Solid And Durable Happiness There Is In Our Lives.
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If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Be Set To Do Another And Harder And Better One.
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You People Have No Imagination!
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I Was With Book, As A Woman Is With Child.
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Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable. How Many Hours Are In A Mile? Is Yellow Square Or Round? Probably Half The Questions We Ask - Half Our Great Theological And Metaphysical Problems - Are Like That.
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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.
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If We Ignore It The Truth That God Is Love May Slyly Come To Mean For Us The Converse, That Love Is God.
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I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.
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Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.
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He Produced Mainly Three Results: Hatred, Terror, Adoration.
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The Surest Way Of Spoiling A Pleasure [is] To Start Examining Your Satisfaction.
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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.
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When We Christians Behave Badly, Or Fail To Behave Well, We Are Making Christianity Unbelievable To The Outside World. The Wartime Posters Told Us That Careless Talk Costs Lives. It Is Equally True That Careless Lives Cost Talk. Our Careless Lives Set The Outer World Talking; And We Give Them Grounds For Talking In A Way That Throws Doubt On The Truth Of Christianity Itself.
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Poetry Most Often Communicates Emotions, Not Directly, But By Creating Imaginatively The Grounds For Those Emotions. It Therefore Communicates Something More Than The Emotion; Only By Means Of That Something More Does It Communicate The Emotion At All.
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No Christian And, Indeed, No Historian Could Accept The Epigram Which Defines Religion As 'what A Man Does With His Solitude.'
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No Man Who Says, 'i'm As Good As You,' Believes It. He Would Not Say It If He Did.
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Human Culture Has Always Had To Exist Under The Shadow Of Something Infinitely More Important Than Itself. If Men Had Postponed The Search For Knowledge And Beauty Until They Were Secure, The Search Would Never Have Begun.
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What Does Not Satisfy When We Find It, Was Not The Thing We Were Desiring.
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A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.
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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.
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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.
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Being Nice Doesn’t Make You Stupid. It Makes You Feel Good Because You Know You Are Gracious Enough To Forgive And Smart Enough To Realize How Distasteful Some People Can Be.
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I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself. I Pray Because I'm Helpless. It Doesn't Change God - It Changes Me.
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Because, As We Know, Almost Anything Can Be Read Into Any Book If You Are Determined Enough. This Will Be Especially Impressed On Anyone Who Has Written Fantastic Fiction. He Will Find Reviewers, Both Favourable And Hostile, Reading Into His Stories All Manner Of Allegorical Meanings Which He Never Intended. (some Of The Allegories Thus Imposed On My Own Books Have Been So Ingenious And Interesting That I Often Wish I Had Thought Of Them Myself.)
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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?
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Every Contact You Make With Everyone You Meet Will Help Them Or Hinder Them On Their Journey To Heaven.
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Gone! And You And I Quite Crestfallen. It’s Always Like That, You Can’t Keep Him; It’s Not As If He Were A Tame Lion.
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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."
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I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.
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Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.
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If War Is Ever Lawful, Then Peace Is Sometimes Sinful.
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Humanity Does Not Pass Through Phases As A Train Passes Through Stations: Being Alive, It Has The Privilege Of Always Moving Yet Never Leaving Anything Behind. Whatever We Have Been, In Some Sort We Are Still.
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Whenever All Men Are...hastening To Be Slaves Or Tyrants We Make Liberalism The Prime Bogey.
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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.
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Well, Whatever They Say, You Don't Feel Like Ghosts.
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The Humblest Praise Most, While Cranks & Malcontents Praise Least. Praise Almost Seems To Be Inner Health Made Audible
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Grief. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.
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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.
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Besides Being Complicated, Reality, In My Experience, Is Usually Odd. It Is Not Neat, Not Obvious, Not What You Expect.
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Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.
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Some People Talk As If Meeting The Gaze Of Absolute Goodness Would Be Fun. They Need To Think Again.
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[to Have Faith In Christ] Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice. Thus 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. Not Doing These Things In Order To Be Saved, But Because He Has Begun To Save You Already. Not Hoping To Get To Heaven As A Reward For Your Actions, But Inevitably Wanting To Act In A Certain Way Because A First Faint Gleam Of Heaven Is Already Inside You.
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I See People, As They Approach Me, Trying To Make Up Their Minds Whether They'll 'say Something About It' Or Not. I Hate If They Do, And If They Don't.
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Mind
Every Joy Is Beyond All Others.
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I Am Struck Here By The Curious Mixture Of Justice And Injustice In Our Lives. We Are Blamed For Our Real Faults But Usually Not On The Right Occasions.
Real
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Everything That Is Not Eternal Is Worthless In Eternity.
Eternity
Eternal
Worthless
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)
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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.
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Book
Night
Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.
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Littles
Too Much
Humility, After The First Shock, Is Cheerful Virtue.
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Cheerful
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Cobbles And Kettledrums! ...i Hope This Madness Isn't Going To End In A Moonlit Climb And Broken Necks.
Broken
Necks
Madness
Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.
Heaven
Hell
Variety
I Gave Up Christianity At About 14. Came Back To It When Getting On For 30. Not An Emotional Conversion; Almost Purely Philosophical. I Didn't Want To. I'm Not In The Least A Religious Type. I Want To Be Let Alone, To Feel I'm My Own Master; But Since The Facts Seemed To Be Just The Opposite, I Had To Give In.
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Forgive Us As We Forgive- We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse Gods Mercy For Ourselves.
Forgiving
Mercy
Term
Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.
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Narnia
Happens
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...)
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Writing
Mean
Friendship Arises Out Of Mere Companionship When Two Or More Of The Companions Discover That They Have In Common Some Insight Or Interest Or Even Taste Which The Others Do Not Share And Which, Till That Moment, Each Believed To Be His Own Unique Treasure (or Burden).
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Unique
Two
If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?
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Prayer
Silly
I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.
Kind
Remember
Longing
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.
Love
Inspirational
Broken Heart
Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.
Children
Heart
Want
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.
Lying
Men
Two
If They Embark On This Course The Difference Between The Old And The New Education Will Be An Important One. Where The Old Initiated, The New Merely 'conditions'. The Old Dealt With Its Pupils As Grown Birds Deal With Young Birds When They Teach Them To Fly; The New Deals With Them More As The Poultry-keeper Deals With Young Birds- Making Them Thus Or Thus For Purposes Of Which The Birds Know Nothing. In A Word, The Old Was A Kind Of Propagation-men Transmitting Manhood To Men; The New Is Merely Propaganda.
Educational
Men
Differences
Failures Are Finger Posts On The Road To Achievement.
Inspirational
Positive
Success
Of All Bad Men Religious Bad Men Are The Worst.
Inspirational
Religious
Men
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?
Summer
Daughter
War
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.
Pain
Littles
Helping
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.
Wisdom
Thinking
Differences
If A Man Is Going To Write On Chemistry, He Learns Chemistry. The Same Is True Of Christianity.
Writing
Men
Chemistry
A Dragon Has Just Flown Over The Tree-tops And Lighted On The Beach. Yes, I Am Afraid It Is Between Us And The Ship. And Arrows Are No Use Against Dragons. And They're Not At All Afraid Of Fire." "with Your Majesty's Leave-" Began Reepicheep. "no, Reepicheep," Said The King Very Firmly, "you Are Not To Attempt A Single Combat With It.
Beach
Kings
Fire
They Did Nothing Wrong Their Time Here Has Ended
You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.
Friendship
Funny Best Friend
Real Friends
In Each Of My Friends There Is Something That Only Some Other Friend Can Fully Bring Out. By Myself I Am Not Large Enough To Call The Whole Man Into Activity; I Want Other Lights Than My Own To Show All His Facets... Hence True Friendship Is The Least Jealous Of Loves. Two Friends Delight To Be Joined By A Third, And Three By A Fourth, If Only The Newcomer Is Qualified To Become A Real Friend. They Can Then Say, As The Blessed Souls Say In Dante, "here Comes One Who Will Augment Our Loves." For In This Love "to Divide Is Not To Take Away.
Real
Blessed
Jealous
When Golden Moments Come, When God Enables One Really To Pray Without Words, Who But A Fool Would Reject The Gift?
Golden
Fool
Praying
The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him.
Design
Being Free
United
He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.
Lions
Narnia
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
We Do Not See Into Men’s Hearts. We Cannot Judge, And Are Indeed Forbidden To Judge.
Heart
Men
Judging
It Takes All Sorts To Make A World; Or A Church. This May Be Even Truer Of A Church. If Grace Perfects Nature It Must Expand All Our Natures Into The Full Richness Of The Diversity Which God Intended When He Made Them, And Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.
Diversity
Heaven
Grace
Every Uncorrected Error And Unrepented Sin Is, In Its Own Right, A Fountain Of Fresh Error And Fresh Sin Flowing On To The End Of Time.
Time
Errors
Sin
God Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.
Compliment
Tragic
Inexorable
Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself; Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.
Firsts
Speak
Spoiled
And How Could We Endure To Live And Let Time Pass If We Were Always Crying For One Day Or One Year To Come Back--if We Did Not Know That Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectation And Memory And That These Are That Day?
Memories
Years
Expectations
Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It.
Heaven
Made
Seems
The Human Qualities Of The Raw Materials Show Through. Naivety, Error, Contradiction, Even (as In The Cursing Psalms) Wickedness Are Not Removed. The Total Result Is Not "the Word Of God" In The Sense That Every Passage In Itself, Gives Impeccable Science Or History. It Carries The Word Of God.
Bible
Biblical
Errors
A Noble Hunger, Long Unsatisfied, Met At Last Its Proper Food.
Sweet
Long
Noble
War Creates No Absolutely New Situation: It Simply Aggravates The Permanent Human Situation So That We Can No Longer Ignore It. Human Life Has Always Been Lived On The Edge Of A Precipice.
Peace
War
Civilization
When The Whole World Is Running Towards A Cliff, He Who Is Running In The Opposite Direction Appears To Have Lost His Mind.
Running
Crazy
Mistake
It Was A Full Moon And, Shining On All The Snow, It Made Everything Almost As Bright As Day -- Only The Shadows Were Rather Confusing.
Moon
Snow
Shining
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.
Real
Writing
Fire
Mental Pain Is Less Dramatic Than Physical Pain, But It Is More Common And Also More Hard To Bear. The Frequent Attempt To Conceal Mental Pain Increases The Burden: It Is Easier To Say “my Tooth Is Aching” Than To Say “my Heart Is Broken.
Depression
Pain
Heart
Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Ever Be Really Yours.
Inspirational
Kindness
Generosity
Democracy Demands That Little Men Should Not Take Big Ones Too Seriously; It Dies When It Is Full Of Little Men Who Think They Are Big Themselves.
Men
Thinking
Democracy
Tea Should Be Taken In Solitude.
Taken
Solitude
Tea
Reason Is The Natural Order Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning.
Order
Imagination
Literature
This World Is A Great Sculptor's Shop. We Are The Statues And There Is A Rumor Going Round The Shop That Some Of Us Are Some Day Going To Come To Life.
Life
Rumor
World
We Shall Not Be Well So Long As We Love And Admire Anything More Than We Love And Admire God.
Long
Admire
Wells
A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.
Art
Men
Helping
He Didn't Call His Father And Mother 'father' And 'mother' But Harold And Alberta. They Were Very Up To Date And Advanced People. They Were Vegetarians, Non-smokers And Teetotalers, And Wore A Special Kind Of Underclothes. In Their House There Was Very Little Furniture And Very Few Clothes On The Beds And The Windows Were Always Open.
Mother
Father
Clothes
The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.
Brain
Religion
Atheism
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.
Light
Doors
Differences
I May Repeat 'do As You Would Be Done By' Till I Am Black In The Face, But I Cannot Really Carry It Out Till I Love My Neighbor As Myself: And I Cannot Learn To Love My Neighbor As Myself Till I Learn To Love God;and I Cannot Learn To Love God Except By Learning To Obey Him.
Black
Would Be
Done
A Particular Ikon An Aid To Devotion May Be Itself A Word Of Art, But That Is Logically Accidental; Its Artistic Merits Will Not Make It A Better ... Ikon. They May Make It A Worse One.
Art
Poetry
Literature
The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.
Time
Grace
Done
Your Majesty Would Have A Perfect Right To Strike Off His Head," Said Peridan. "such An Assault As He Made Puts Him On A Level With Assassins." "it Is Very True," Said Edmund. "but Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did." And He Looked Very Thoughtful.
Thoughtful
Perfect
Majesty
The Future Is Something Which Everyone Reaches At The Rate Of 60 Minutes An Hour, Whatever He Does, Whoever He Is.
Inspirational
Funny
Life
There Was Nothing Medieval People Liked Better, Or Did Better, Than Sorting Out And Tidying Up. Of All Our Modern Inventions I Suspect That They Would Most Have Admired The Card Index.
People
Sorting Out
Cards
Our Problem With Desire Is That We Want Too Little.
Desire
Want
Littles
The Process Of Living Seems To Consist In Coming To Realize Truths So Ancient And Simple That, If Stated, They Sound Like Barren Platitudes.
Simple
Sound
Realizing
In Our Adversity, God Shouts To Us.
Adversity
Look For The Valleys, The Green Places, And Fly Through Them. There Will Always Be A Way Through.
Valleys
Looks
Green
For Jokes As Well As Justice Come In With Speech.
Justice
Nephew
Speech
A Glimpse Is Not A Vision. But To A Man On A Mountain Road By Night, A Glimpse Of The Next Three Feet Of Road May Matter More Than A Vision Of The Horizon.
Night
Men
Feet
My Own View Is That The Churches Should Frankly Recognise That The Majority Of The British People Are Not Christians And, Therefore, Cannot Be Expected To Live Christian Lives. There Ought To Be Two Distinct Kinds Of Marriage: One Governed By The State With Rules Enforced On All Citizens, The Other Governed By The Church With Rules Enforced By Her On Her Own Members." --about The Only Statement I Agree With In This Book
Christian
Book
Views
The Next Best Thing To Being Wise Oneself Is To Live In A Circle Of Those Who Are.
Wise
Wisdom
Circles
Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.
Christian
Thinking
Principles
The Real Test Of Being In The Presence Of God Is, That You Either Forget About Yourself Altogether Or See Yourself As A Small, Dirty Object.
Real
Dirty
Tests
God Loves Us Not Because We're Lovable, Because He Is Love. Not Because He Needs To Receive, Because He Delights To Give.
Giving
Needs
Delight
But I Will Not Tell You How Long Or Short The Way Will Be; Only That It Lies Across A River. But Do Not Fear That, For I Am The Great Bridge Builder.
Lying
Bridges
Rivers
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.
Heart
Voice
Religion
If Minds Are Wholly Dependent On Brains And Brains On Biochemistry, And Biochemistry (in The Long Run) On The Meaningless Flux Of The Atoms, I Cannot Understand How The Thought Of Those Minds Should Have Any More Significance Than The Sound Of The Wind In The Trees.
Running
Should Have
Wind
We Have Made Men Proud Of Most Vices, But Not Of Cowardice. Whenever We Have Almost Succeeded In Doing So, God Permits A War Or An Earthquake Or Some Other Calamity, And At Once Courage Becomes So Obviously Lovely And Important Even In Human Eyes That All Our Work Is Undone, And There Is Still At Least One Vice Of Which They Feel Genuine Shame. The Danger Of Inducing Cowardice In Our Patients, Therefore, Is Lest We Produce Real Self-knowledge And Self-loathing, With Consequent Repentance And Humility.
Real
War
Humility
Above All, Do Not Attempt To Use Science (i Mean, The Real Sciences) As A Defence Against Christianity. They Will Positively Encourage Him To Think About Realities He Can’t Touch And See.
Real
Mean
Thinking
But No One Except Lucy Knew That As It Circled The Mast It Had Whispered To Her, "courage, Dear Heart," And The Voice, She Felt Sure, Was Aslan's, And With The Voice A Delicious Smell Breathed In Her Face.
Heart
Voice
Smell
Anyone Who Endeavors To Be A Christian Will Soon Find His Intelligence Being Sharpened. You Are Embarking On Something That Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.
Christian
Brain
Endeavor
The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.
Past
Knowing
Recent Past
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.
God
Men
Care
Courtship Is The Time For Sowing Those Seeds Which Will Grow Up Ten Years Into Domestic Hatred.
Time
Growing Up
Years
Don't Say It Was Delightful; Make Us Say Delightful When We've Read The Description. You See, All Those Words (horrifying, Wonderful, Hideous, Exquisite) Are Only Like Saying To Your Readers Please Will You Do The Job For Me.
Jobs
Writing
Wonderful
If The Parents In Each Generation Always Or Often Knew What Really Goes On At Their Sons' Schools, The History Of Education Would Be Very Different.
School
Son
Parent
No Mind Is So Good That It Does Not Need Another Mind To Counter And Equal It, And To Save It From Conceit And Bigotry And Folly
Mind
Doe
Needs
When We See The Face Of God We Shall Know That We Have Always Known It. He Has Been A Party To, Has Made, Sustained And Moved Moment By Moment Within, All Our Earthly Experiences Of Innocent Love.
Party
Faces
Innocence
Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.
Names
Matter
Forget
A Faith In Culture Is As Bad As A Faith In Religion; Both Expressions Imply A Turning Away From Those Very Things Which Culture And Religion Are About. Culture As A Collective Name For Certain Very Valuable Activities Is A Permissible Word; But Culture Hypostatized, Set Up On Its Own, Made Into A Faith, A Cause, A Banner, A Platform, Is Unendurable. For None Of The Activities In Question Cares A Straw For That Faith Or Cause. It Is Like A Return To Early Semitic Religion Where Names Themselves Were Regarded As Powers.
Expression
Names
Culture
The Pain I Feel Now Is The Happiness I Had Before. That's The Deal.
Happiness
Happy
Uplifting
We Who Have Been True Readers All Our Life Fully Realize The Enormous Of Our Being Which We Owe To Authors.
Realizing
Enormous
Reader
What We Called Love Down There Was Mostly The Craving To Be Loved. In The Main I Loved You For My Own Sake: Because I Needed You...we Shall Have No Need For One Another Now: We Can Begin To Love Truly.
Inspirational
Religious
Needs
Once A King In Narnia, Always A King In Narnia. But Don't Go Trying To Use The Same Route Twice. Indeed, Don't Try To Get There At All. It'll Happen When You're Not Looking For It. And Don't Talk Too Much About It Even Among Yourselves. And Don't Mention It To Anyone Else Unless You Find That They've Had Adventures Of The Same Sort Themselves. What's That? How Will You Know? Oh, You'll Know All Right. Odd Things, They Say-even Their Looks-will Let The Secret Out. Keep Your Eyes Open. Bless Me, What Do They Teach Them At These Schools." -the Profesor
Kings
School
Adventure
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.
Atheist
Dark
Simple
You Can Make Anything By Writing.
Writing
Kids
Storytelling
A Sick Society Must Think Much About Politics, As A Sick Man Must Think Much About His Digestion.
Men
Thinking
Sick
A Catholic Priest, A Jewish Rabbi, And A Muslim Mullah All Walk Into A Bar, And The Bartender Says: - What Is This, A Joke? - Сhurch Is The Only Organization That Exists Primarily For The Benefit Of Non-members.
Organization
Catholic
Bars
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.
Dream
Journey
Roaring
He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.
God
Christian
Theologian
If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Be Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.
Trying
Nine
Telling The Truth
The Prayer Preceding All Prayers Is 'may It Be The Real I Who Speaks. May It Be The Real Thou That I Speak To.'
Prayer
Real
May
Certain Things, If Not Seen As Lovely Or Detestable, Are Not Being Correctly Seen At All.
Wisdom
Lovely
Certain
Provocation Doesn't Make Me Ill-tempered: It Only Shows Me How Ill-tempered I Am.
Ill Tempered
Show Me
Shows
Though Under Earth, And Throneless Now I Be Yet While I Lived All Earth Was Under Me.
Earth
It Is Natural For Us To Wish That God Had Designed For Us A Less Glorious And Less Arduous Destiny; But Then We Are Wishing Not For More Love But For Less.
Destiny
Wish
Natural
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