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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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What You Want Is

C. S. Lewis

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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.

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

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law: And Without Good Men You Cannot Have A Good Society.

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

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

I Find That When I Think I Am Asking God To Forgive Me I Am Often In Reality. . . Asking Him Not To Forgive Me But To Excuse Me.

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

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

When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place.

This Was Bad Grammar Of Course, But That Is How Beavers Talk When They Are Excited; I Mean, In Narnia--in Our World They Usually Don't Talk At All. - The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

So That The One Road For Which We Now Need God's Leadership Most Of All Is A Road God, In His Own Nature, Has Never Walked. But Suppose God Became A Man... He Could Surrender His Will, Suffer And Die, Because He Was A Man.

[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.

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.

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).

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

It Is The Magician's Bargain: Give Up Our Soul, Get Power In Return. But Once Our Souls, That Is, Ourselves, Have Been Given Up, The Power Thus Conferred Will Not Belong To Us. We Shall In Fact Be The Slaves And Puppets Of That To Which We Have Given Our Souls.

We Can Rest Contentedly In Our Sins And In Our Stupidities, And Anyone Who Has Watched Gluttons Shoveling Down The Most Exquisite Foods As If They Did Not Know What They Were Eating Will Admit That We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Consciences, But Shouts In Our Pains. It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World.

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?

The Greatest Evil Is Not Done In Those Sordid Dens Of Evil That Dickens Loved To Paint ... But Is Conceived And Ordered (moved, Seconded, Carried, And Minuted) In Clear, Carpeted, Warmed, Well-lighted Offices, By Quiet Men With White Collars And Cut Fingernails And Smooth-shaven Cheeks Who Do Not Need To Raise Their Voices.

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

It Is When We Notice The Dirt That God Is Most Present In Us; It Is The Very Sign Of His Presence.

What Do People Mean When They Say, 'i Am Not Afraid Of God Because I Know He Is Good'? Have They Never Even Been To A Dentist?

God Gives His Gifts Where He Finds The Vessel Empty Enough To Receive Them.

Writing Is Like A 'lust,' Or Like 'scratching When You Itch.' Writing Comes As A Result Of A Very Strong Impulse, And When It Does Come, I For One Must Get It Out.

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.

If Only This Toothache Would Go Away, I Could Write Another Chapter On The Problem Of Pain.

The Higher The Stakes, The Greater The Temptation To Lose Your Temper.

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

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.

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.

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

We Are Forbidden To Neglect The Assembling Of Ourselves Together. Christianity Is Already Institutional In The Earliest Of Its Documents. The Church Is The Bride Of Christ. We Are Members Of One Another.

He (the Devil) Always Sends Errors Into The World In Pairs--pairs Of Opposites...he Relies On Your Extra Dislike Of One To Draw You Gradually Into The Opposite One. But Do Not Let Us Be Fooled. We Have To Keep Our Eyes On The Goal And Go Straight Through Between Both Errors. We Have No Other Concern Than That With Either Of Them.

It Seems To Me That We Often, Almost Sulkily, Reject The Good That God Offers Us Because, At That Moment, We Expected Some Other Good.

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.

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.

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.

Every Good Book Should Be Entertaining. A Good Book Will Be More; It Must Not Be Less. Entertainment…is Like A Qualifying Examination. If A Fiction Can’t Provide That, We May Be Excused From Inquiring Into Its Higher Qualities.

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

Our Problem Is Not That We Desire Too Much But Too Little.

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.

There Is One Bit Of Advice Given Us By The Ancient Greeks, And By The Jews In The Old Testament, And By The Great Christian Teachers Of The Middle Ages, Which The Modern Economic System Has Completely Disobeyed. All These People Told Us Not To Lend Money At Interest; And Lending Money At Interest - What We Call Investment - Is The Basis Of Our Whole System.

I Can Say A Prayer While Washing My Teeth, But That Does Not Mean I Should Wash My Teeth In Church.

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

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

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

It Is Better To Forget About Yourself Altogether.

In God You Come Up Against Something Which Is In Every Respect Immeasurably Superior To Yourself. Unless You Know God As That-and, Therefore, Know Yourself As Nothing In Comparison-you Do Not Know God At All.

You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.

I Have Discovered That The People Who Believe Most Strongly In The Next Life Do The Most Good In The Present One.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.

What Do They Teach Them At These Schools?

I Felt In My Bones That This Universe Does Not Explain Itself.

Most People Don't Need To Be Taught, They Need Only To Be Reminded

We May Be Sure That The Characteristic Blindness Of The Twentieth Century [...] Lies Where We Have Never Suspected It [...] The Only Palliative Is [...] By Reading Old Books. [...] The Books Of The Future Would Be Just As Good [...], But Unfortunately We Cannot Get At Them.

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

Courtship Is The Time For Sowing Those Seeds Which Will Grow Up Ten Years Into Domestic Hatred.

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

The 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.

We Sit Down Before The Picture In Order To Have Something Done To Us, Not That We May Do Things With It. The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way (there Is No Good Asking First Whether The Work Before You Deserves Such A Surrender, For Until You Have Surrendered You Cannot Possibly Find Out.

Away With Tears And Fears And Troubles! United In Wedlock With The Eternal Godhead Itself, Our Nature Ascends Into The Heaven Of Heavens. So It Would Be Impious To Call Ourselves 'miserable.' On The Contrary, Man Is A Creature Whom The Angels-were They Capable Of Envy-would Envy. Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts!

For Prayer Is Request. The Essence Of Request, As Distinct From Compulsion, Is That It May Or May Not Be Granted.

We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.

The Next Moment Is As Much Beyond Our Grasp, And As Much In God's Care, As That A Hundred Years Away. Care For The Next Minute Is As Foolish As Care For A Day In The Next Thousand Years. In Neither Can We Do Anything, In Both God Is Doing Everything.

Whatever He Says, Let His Inner Resolution Be Not To Bear Whatever Comes To Him, But To Bear It 'for A Reasonable Period'--and Let The Reasonable Period Be Shorter Than The Trial Is Likely To Last. It Need Not Be Much Shorter; In Attacks On Patience, Chastity, And Fortitude, The Fun Is To Make The Man Yield Just When (had He But Known It) Relief Was Almost In Sight.

One Is Sometimes Glad Not To Be A Great Theologian; One Might Easily Mistake It For Being A Good Christian.

Daughter, I Have Now Lived A Hundred And Nine Winters In This World And Have Never Yet Met Any Such Thing As Luck. There Is Something About All This That I Do Not Understand: But If Ever We Need To Know It, You May Be Sure That We Shall.

Puddleglum's My Name. But It Doesn't Matter If You Forget It. I Can Always Tell You Again.

We Have Had Enough, Once And For All, Of Hedonism--the Gloomy Philosophy Which Says That Pleasure Is The Only Good.

Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Also Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

The More Pride We Have, The More Other People’s Pride Irritates Us

The Modern State Exists Not To Protect Our Rights But To Do Us Good Or Make Us Good - Anyway, To Do Something To Us Or To Make Us Something. Hence The New Name 'leaders' For Those Who Were Once 'rulers'. We Are Less Their Subjects Than Their Wards, Pupils, Or Domestic Animals. There Is Nothing Left Of Which We Can Say To Them, 'mind Your Own Business.' Our Whole Lives Are Their Business.

One Always Feel Better When One Has Made Up One's Mind.

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

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.

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

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

We Only Learn To Behave Ourselves In The Presence Of God.

Presence Of God

The Idea Which...shuts Out The Second Coming From Our Minds, The Idea Of The World Slowly Ripening To Perfection, Is A Myth, Not A Generalization From Experience.

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

Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It.

We Must Stop Regarding Unpleasant Or Unexpected Things As Interruptions Of Real Life. The Truth Is That Interruptions Are Real Life.

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

Make Your Choice, Adventurous Stranger, Strike The Bell And Bide The Danger, Or Wonder, Till It Drives You Mad, What Would Have Followed If You Had.

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

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

For Me, Reason Is The Natural Organ Of Truth; But Imagination Is The Organ Of Meaning. Imagination, Producing New Metaphors Or Revivifying Old, Is Not The Cause Of Truth, But Its Condition.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

I Do Not Expect Old Heads On Young Shoulders.

Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.

Everyone Says That Forgiveness Is A Lovely Idea Until He Has Something To Forgive Yet Tasted One Of The Most Sublime Enjoyments Of Life.

It Is Because They Have No Oyarsa,' Said One Of The Pupils. It Is Because Everyone Of Them Wants To Be A Little Oyarsa Himself,' Said Augray.

We Are Half-hearted Creatures, Fooling About With Drink And Sex And Ambition When Infinite Joy Is Offered Us.

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.

God Made Us: Invented Us As A Man Invents An Engine. A Car Is Made To Run On Petrol, And It Would Not Run Properly On Anything Else. Now God Designed The Human Machine To Run On Himself.

A Sick Society Must Think Much About Politics, As A Sick Man Must Think Much About His Digestion.

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

Never Use Abstract Nouns When Concrete Ones Will Do. If You Mean “more People Died” Don’t Say “mortality Rose.

In My Experience, It Is Affection That Creates This Taste, Teaching Us First To Notice, Then To Endure, Then To Smile At, Then To Enjoy, And Finally To Appreciate The People Who 'happen To Be There.' Made For Us? Thank God, No. They Are Themselves, Odder Than You Could Have Believed And Worth Far More Than We Guessed.

When The Voice Of Your Friend Or The Page Of Your Book Sinks Into Democratic Equality With The Pattern Of The Wallpaper, The Feel Of Your Clothes, Your Memory Of Last Night, And The Noises From The Road, You Are Falling Asleep. The Highly Selective Consciousness Enjoyed By Fully Alert Men, With All Its Builded Sentiments And Consecrated Ideals, Has As Much To Be Called Real As The Drowsy Chaos, And More.

The Unhistorical Are Usually, Without Knowing It, Enslaved To A Fairly Recent Past.

I Believe That If A Million Chances Were Likely To Do Good, They Would Be Given.

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.

Forgive Us As We Forgive- We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse Gods Mercy For Ourselves.

Education Without Values, As Useful As It Is, Seems Rather To Make Man A More Clever Devil.

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

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

You Can't Get A Cup Of Tea Large Enough Or A Book Long Enough To Suit Me.

When He [god] Talks Of Their Losing Their Selves, He Means Only Abandoning The Clamour Of Self-will; Once They Have Done That, He Really Gives Them Back All Their Personality, And Boasts (i Am Afraid, Sincerely) That When They Are Wholly His They Will Be More Themselves Than Ever.

Shall I Ever Be Able To Read That Story Again; The One I Couldn't Remember? Will You Tell It To Me, Aslan? Oh Do,do,do." "indeed,yes, I Will Tell It To You For Years And Years. But Now, Come. We Must Meet The Master Of This House.

Each New Power Won By Man Is A Power Over Man As Well. Each Advance Leaves Him Weaker As Well As Stronger.

Thought Provoking

Those Who Torment Us For Our Own Good Will Torment Us Without End, For They Do So With The Approval Of Their Own Conscience.

Libertarian Party

Democracies Have

But One Of The Worst Results Of Being A Slave And Being Forced To Do Things Is That When There Is No One To Force You Any More You Find You Have Almost Lost The Power Of Forcing Yourself.

A Great Many Of Those Who 'debunk' Traditional...values Have In The Background Values Of Their Own Which They Believe To Be Immune From The Debunking Process

If We Only Have The Will To Walk, Then God Is Pleased With Our Stumbles.

For Jokes As Well As Justice Come In With Speech.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

If A Man Thinks He Is Not Conceited, He Is Very Conceited Indeed.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably.

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.

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.

History Is A Story Written By The Finger Of God.

The Question Is Not What We Intended Ourselves To Be, But What He Intended Us To Be When He Made Us.

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.

We Are Not Living In A World Where All Roads Are Radii If A Circle And Where All, If Followed Long Enough, Will Therefore Draw Gradually Nearer And Finally Meet At The Centre: Rather In A World Where Every Road, After A Few Miles, Forks Into Two, And Each Of Those Into Two Again, And At Each Fork You Must Make A Decision.

Nature Does Not Teach. A True Philosophy May Sometimes Validate An Experience Of Nature; An Experience Of Nature Cannot Validate A Philosophy. Nature Will Not Verify Any Theological Or Metaphysical Proposition (or Not In The Manner We Are Now Considering); She Will Help To Show What It Means.

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

What Can You Ever Really Know Of Other People's Souls — Of Their Temptations, Their Opportunities, Their Struggles? One Soul In The Whole Of Creation You Do Know: And It Is The Only One Whose Fate Is Placed In Your Hands. If There Is A God, You Are, In A Sense, Alone With Him.

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?)

I Hope I Do Not Offend God By Making My Communions In The Frame Of Mind I Have Been Describing. The Command, After All, Was Take, Eat: Not Take, Understand.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues. There Is No Getting Away From It; The Old Christian Rule Is, "either Marriage, With Completely Faithfulness To Your Partner, Or Else Total Abstinence."

I Believe Buddhism To Be A Simplification Of Hinduism And Islam To Be A Simplification Of Xianity.

Nothing Which Is At All Times And In Every Way Agreeable To Us Can Have Objective Reality. It Is Of The Very Nature Of The Real That It Should Have Sharp Corners And Rough Edges, That It Should Be Resistant, Should Be Itself. Dream-furniture Is The Only Kind On Which You Never Stub Your Toes Or Bang Your Knee.

‎"don't Bother Too Much About Your Feelings. When They Are Humble, Loving, Brave, Give Thanks For Them; When They Are Conceited, Selfish, Cowardly, Ask To Have Them Altered. In Neither Case Are They You, But Only A Thing That Happens To You. What Matters Is Your Intentions And Your Behavior

Aslan's Instructions Always Work; There Are No Exceptions.

If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing-rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

Mere Change Is Not Growth. Growth Is The Synthesis Of Change And Continuity, And Where There Is No Continuity There Is No Growth.

...the Sun Looks Down On Nothing Half So Good As A Household Laughing Together Over A Meal, Or Two Friends Talking Over A Pint Of Beer, Or A Man Alone Reading A Book That Interests Him..." - C.s. Lewis: Weight Of Glory

The Standard That Measures Two Things Is Something Different From Either. You Are, In Fact, Comparing Them Both With Some Real Morality, Admitting That There Is Such A Thing As A Real Right, Independent Of What People Think, And That Some People's Ideas Get Nearer To That Real Right Than Others.

But He Always Licked To Get Visitors Alone In The Billiard Room And Tell Them Stories About A Mysterious Lady, A Foreign Royalty, With Whom He Had Driven About London. 'a Devilish Temper She Had,' He Would Say. 'but She Was A Dem Fine Woman, Sir, A Dem Fine Woman.

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

I Felt Ashamed." "but Of What? Psyche, They Hadn't Stripped You Naked Or Anything?" "no, No, Maia. Ashamed Of Looking Like A Mortal -- Of Being A Mortal." "but How Could You Help That?" "don't You Think The Things People Are Most Ashamed Of Are Things They Can't Help?

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

Very Few Modern People Think Friendship A Love Of Comparable Value Or Even A Love At All.

We Have Discovered That The Scheme Of 'outlawing War' Has Made War More Like An Outlaw Without Making It Less Frequent And That To Banish The Knight Does Not Alleviate The Suffering Of The Peasant.

Honest Rejection Of Christ, However Mistaken, Will Be Forgiven And Healed ... But To Evade The Son Of Man, To Look The Other Way, To Pretend You Haven't Noticed, To Become Suddenly Absorbed In Something On The Other Side Of The Street, To Leave The Receiver Off The Telephone Because It Might Be He Who Was Ringing Up, To Leave Unopened Certain Letters In A Strange Handwriting Because They Might Be From Him -- This Is A Different Matter. You May Not Be Certain Yet Whether You Ought To Be A Christian; But You Do Know You Ought To Be A Man, Not An Ostrich, Hiding Its Head In The Sand.

Once People Stop Believing In God, The Problem Is Not That They Will Believe In Nothing; Rather, The Problem Is That They Will Believe Anything.

It Is Often Little Things That Are Hardest To Stand.

If Human Life Is In Fact Ordered By A Beneficent Being Whose Knowledge Of Our Real Needs And Of The Way In Which They Can Be Satisfied Infinitely Exceeds Our Own, We Must Expect A Priori That His Operations Will Often Appear To Us Far From Beneficent And Far From Wise, And That It Will Be Our Highest Prudence To Give Him Our Confidence In Spite Of This.

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

To What Will You Look For Help If You Will Not Look To That Which Is Stronger Than Yourself?

There Are No Ordinary People. You Have Never Talked To A Mere Mortal.

Try To Exclude The Possibility Of Suffering Which The Order Of Nature And The Existence Of Free-wills Involve, And You Find That You Have Excluded Life Itself

Before We Can Be Cured, We Must Want To Be Cured.

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

If Devils Exist, Their First Aim Is To Give You An Anesthetic -- To Put You Off Your Guard. Only If That Fails, Do You Become Aware Of Them.

If We Accept Heaven We Shall Not Be Able To Retain Even The Smallest And Most Intimate Souvenirs Of Hell.

Man Was Appointed By God To Have Dominion Over The Beasts, And Everything A Man Does To An Animal Is Either A Lawful Exercise Or A Sacrilegious Abuse Of An Authority By Divine Right.

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.)

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

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.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

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

One Of The Marks Of A Certain Type Of Bad Man Is That He Cannot Give Up A Thing Himself Without Wanting Every One Else To Give It Up. That Is Not The Christian Way. An Individual Christian May See Fit To Give Up All Sorts Of Things For Special Reasons--marriage, Or Meat, Or Beer, Or The Cinema; But The Moment He Starts Saying The Things Are Bad In Themselves, Or Looking Down His Nose At Other People Who Do Use Them, He Has Taken The Wrong Turning.

What We Learn From Experience Depends On The Kind Of Philosophy We Bring To Experience.

Learning Experience

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

You Can't Know, You Can Only Believe - Or Not.

Oh, I'm A Dangerous Criminal, I Am,' Said The Dwarf Cheerfully.

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

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

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.

There Seems No Plan Because It Is All Plan.

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

Man Approaches God Most Nearly When He Is In One Sense Least Like God. For What Can Be More Unlike Than Fullness And Need, Sovereignty And Humility, Righteousness And Penitence, Limitless Power And A Cry For Help?

Though It Was Bright Sunshine Everyone Felt Suddenly Cold. The Only Two People Present Who Seemed To Be Quite At Their Ease Were Aslan And The Witch Herself. It Was The Oddest Thing To See Those Two Faces - The Golden Face And The Dead-white Face So Close Together. Not That The Witch Looked Aslan Exactly In His Eyes; Mrs Beaver Particularly Noticed This.

Not To Be, But To Seem, Virtuous - It Is A Formula Whose Utility We All Discovered In The Nursery.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law.

A Powerful Dragon Crying Its Eyes Out Under The Moon In A Deserted Valley Is A Sight And A Sound Hardly To Be Imagined.

I Am A Product Of Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them. There Were Books In The Study, Books In The Drawing Room, Books In The Cloakroom, Books (two Deep) In The Great Bookcase On The Landing, Books In A Bedroom, Books Piled As High As My Shoulder In The Cistern Attic...in The Seemingly Endless Rainy Afternoons I Took Volume After Volume From The Shelves. I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When A Single Particular Person Claims To A Different: 'what! You Far Too? I Assumed I Was The Only Real One Particular.

A Spoiled Saint, A Pharisee, An Inquisitor, Or A Magician, Makes Better Sport To Hell Than A Mere Common Tyrant Or Debauchee.

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

The Claim To Equality, Outside Of The Strictly Political Field, Is Made Only By Those Who Feel Themselves To Be In Some Way Inferior.

For A Long Time I Used To Think This A Silly, Straw-splitting Distinction: How Could You Hate What A Man Did And Not Hate The Man? But Years Later It Occurred To Me That There Was One Man To Whom I Had Been Doing This All My Life - Namely Myself.

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.

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

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

I Think Each Village Was Meant To Feel Pity For Its Own Sick And Poor Whom It Can Help And I Doubt If It Is The Duty Of Any Private Person To Fix His Mind On Ills Which He Cannot Help. This May Even Become An Escape From The Works Of Charity We Really Can Do To Those We Know. God May Call Any One Of Us To Respond To Some Far Away Problem Or Support Those Who Have Been So Called. But We Are Finite And He Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

[the Natural Life] Knows That If The Spiritual Life Gets Hold Of It, All Its Self-centredness And Self-will Are Going To Be Killed And It Is Ready To Fight Tooth And Nail To Avoid That.

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

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

We 'have All We Want' Is A Terrible Saying When 'all' Does Not Include God. We Find God An Interruption. As St. Augustine Says Somewhere, 'god Wants To Give Us Something, But Cannot, Because Our Hands Are Full - There's Nowhere For Him To Put It.'

And All The Time - Such Is The Tragic Comedy Of Our Situation - We Continue To Clamor For Those Very Qualities We Are Rendering Impossible. We Make Men Without Chests And Expect Of Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst. We Castrate And Bid The Geldings Be Fruitful.

A World Of Automata – Of Creatures That Worked Like Machines – Would Hardly Be Worth Creating.

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.

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.

The Heart Of Christianity Is A Myth Which Is Also A Fact. The Old Myth Of The Dying God, Without Ceasing To Be A Myth, Comes Down From The Heaven Of Legend And Imagination To The Earth Of History.

The Devil Loves 'curing' A Small Fault By Giving You A Great One.

You Must See That If Two Things Are Alike, Then It Is A Further Question Whether The First Is Copied From The Second, Or The Second From The First, Or Both From A Third.

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