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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.

-C. S. Lewis

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When You Are Not

C. S. Lewis

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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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Wouldn't He Know Without Being Asked?' Said Polly. 'i've No Doubt He Would,' Said The Horse (still With His Mouth Full). 'but I've A Sort Of An Idea He Likes To Be Asked.

Every Object You See Before You At This Moment -the Walls, Ceiling, And Furniture, The Book, Your Own Washed Hands And Cut Fingernails, Bears Witness To The Colonization Of Nature Of Reason.

What Does Not Satisfy When We Find It, Was Not The Thing We Were Desiring.

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

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.

Thus, And Not Otherwise, The World Was Made. Either Something Or Nothing Must Depend On Individual Choices.

Individual Choice

God Is Basic Fact. He Must Not Be Thought Of As A Featureless Generality. He Is The Most Concrete Thing There Is.

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

When The Police Arrived And Found No Lion, No Broken Wall, And No Convicts, And The Head Behaving Like A Lunatic, There Was An Inquiry Into The Whole Thing. And In The Inquiry All Sorts Of Things About Experiment House Came Out, And About Ten People Got Expelled. After That, The Head's Friends Saw That The Head Was No Use As A Head, So They Got Her Made An Inspector To Interfere With Other Heads. And When They Found She Wasn't Much Good Even At That, They Got Her Into Parliament Where She Lived Happily Ever After.

Everything Is As Good Or Bad As Our Opinion Makes It.

When Catholicism Goes Bad It Becomes The Religion Of Amulets And Holy Places And Priestcraft: Protestantism, In Its Corresponding Decay, Becomes A Vague Mist Of Ethical Platitudes

Affection Would Not Be Affection If It Was Loudly And Frequently Expressed; To Produce It In Public Is Like Getting Your Household Furniture Out For A Move. It Did Very Well In Its Place, But It Looks Shabby Or Tawdry Or Grotesque In The Sunshine.

Aren't All These Notes The Senseless Writings Of A Man Who Won't Accept The Fact That There Is Nothing We Can Do With Suffering Except To Suffer It?

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

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them.... 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.

I Don't Want To Hold You Hand!

As For All I Can Tell, The Only Difference Is That What Many See We Call A Real Thing, And What Only One Sees We Call A Dream.

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)

The World Does Not Need More Christian Literature. What It Needs Is More Christians Writing Good Literature.

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

If You Do Not Take The Distinction Between Good And Bad Very Seriously, Then It Is Easy To Say That Anything You Find In This World Is A Part Of God. But, Of Course, If You Think Some Things Really Bad, And God Really Good, Then You Cannot Talk Like That. You Must Believe That God Is Separate From The World And That Some Of The Things We See In It Are Contrary To His Will.

If And When A Horror Turns Up You Will Then Be Given Grace To Help You. I Don't Think One Is Usually Given It In Advance. "give Us Our Daily Bread" (not An Annuity For Life) Applies To Spiritual Gifts Too; The Little Daily Support For The Daily Trial. Life Has To Be Taken Day By Day And Hour By Hour.

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

Gratitude Looks To The Past And Love To The Present; Fear, Avarice, Lust, And Ambition Look Ahead.

In Such A Fearful World, We Need A Fearless Church

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

A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Who Is Enabled To Repent.

Theology Offers You A Working Arrangement, Which Leaves The Scientist Free To Continue His Experiments And The Christian To Continue His Prayers.

There Is No Use Saying You Chose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

Every Joy Is Beyond All Others.

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

Why You Fool, It's The Educated Reader Who Can Be Gulled. All Our Difficulty Comes With The Others. When Did You Meet A Workman Who Believes The Papers? He Takes It For Granted That They're All Propaganda And Skips The Leading Articles....he's Our Problem. We Have To Recondition Him. But The Educated Public, The People Who Read The High-brow Weeklies, Don't Need Reconditioning. They're All Right Already. They'll Believe Anything.

Humility, After The First Shock, Is Cheerful Virtue.

The Typical Expression Of Opening Friendship Would Be Something Like, 'what? You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One!

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.

Aravis Also Had Many Quarrels (and, I'm Afraid, Even Fights) With Cor, But They Always Made It Up Again: So That Years Later, When They Were Grown Up, They Were So Used To Quarrelling And Making It Up Again That They Got Married So As To Go On Doing It More Conveniently.

Crying Is All Right In Its Way While It Lasts. But You Have To Stop Sooner Or Later, And Then You Still Have To Decide What To Do.

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

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

God, In The End, Gives People What They Most Want, Including Freedom From Himself. What Could Be More Fair?

We May Think God Wants Actions Of A Certain Kind, But God Wants People Of A Certain Kind.

Be Sure That The Ins And Outs Of Your Individuality Are No Mystery To Him; And One Day They Will No Longer Be A Mystery To You.

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

All Schools Both Here And In America Should Teach Far Fewer Subjects Far Better.

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.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

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

Enough Had Been Thought, And Said, And Felt, And Imagined. It Was About Time That Something Should Be Done.

Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And... God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again

We Hear A Great Deal About The Rudeness Of The Rising Generation. I Am An Oldster Myself And Might Be Expected To Take The Oldsters' Side, But In Fact I Have Been Far More Impressed By The Bad Manners Of Parents To Children Than By Those Of Children To Parents.

Never Forget That When We Are Dealing With Any Pleasure In Its Healthy And Normal And Satisfying Form, We Are, In A Sense, On The Enemy’s (god’s) Ground…he [god] Made The Pleasure: All Our Research So Far Has Not Enabled Us To Produce One. All We Can Do Is To Encourage The Humans To Take The Pleasures Which Our Enemy [god] Has Produced, At At Times, Or In Ways, Or In Degrees, Which He [god] Has Forbidden.

You And I Who Still Enjoy Fairy Tales Have Less Reason To Wish Actual Childhood Back. We Have Kept Its Pleasures And Added Some Grown-up Ones As Well.

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

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness.

It Is Only Our Bad Temper That We Put Down To Being Tired Or Worried Or Hungry; We Put Our Good Temper Down To Ourselves.

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

Guiding Principles

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With My Mother's Death All Settled Happiness, All That Was Tranquil And Reliable, Disappeared From My Life. There Was To Be Much Fun, Many Pleasures, Many Stabs Of Joy; But No More Of The Old Security. It Was Sea And Islands Now; The Great Continent Had Sunk Like Atlantis.

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.

There Is Nothing Indulgent About The Moral Law. It Is As Hard As Nails. If God Is Like The Moral Law, Then He Is Not Soft.

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.

Don't Judge A Man By Where He Is, Because You Don't Know How Far He Has Come.

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

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[repentance] Means Unlearning All The Self-conceit And Self -will That We Have Been Training Ourselves Into... It Means Killing Part Of Yourself, Under-going A Kind Of Death.

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.

An Author Should Never Conceive Himself As Bringing Into Existence Beauty Or Wisdom Which Did Not Exist Before, But Simply And Solely As Trying To Embody In Terms Of His Own Art Some Reflection Of Eternal Beauty And Wisdom.

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

The Problem Of Reconciling Human Suffering With The Existence Of A God Who Loves, Is Only Insoluble So Long As We Attach A Trivial Meaning To The Word "love."

Imagine A Set Of People All Living In The Same Building. Half Of Them Think It Is A Hotel, The Other Half Think It Is A Prison. Those Who Think It A Hotel Might Regard It As Quite Intolerable, And Those Who Thought It Was A Prison Might Decide That It Was Really Surprisingly Comfortable. So That What Seems The Ugly Doctrine Is One That Comforts And Strengthens You In The End. The People Who Try To Hold An Optimistic View Of This World Would Become Pessimists: The People Who Hold A Pretty Stern View Of It Become Optimistic.

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

Most Of All, Perhaps, We Need An Intimate Knowledge Of The Past. Not That The Past Has Anything Magical About It, But We Cannot Study The Future.

I Never Fully Understood It Till My Friend Professor Tolkien Asked Me The Very Simple Question, 'what Class Of Men Would You Expect To Be Most Preoccupied With, And Hostile To, The Idea Of Escape?' And Gave The Obvious Answer: Jailers.

The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey It.

The Great Thing Is To Be Found At One's Post As A Child Of God, Living Each Day As Though It Were Our Last, But Planning As Though The World Might Last A Hundred Years.

I Want God, Not My Idea Of God.

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.

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.

When We Force A Boy To Be A Mediocrity In A Dozen Subjects We Destroy His Standards, Perhaps For Life.

But If We Admit God, Must We Admit Miracle? Indeed, Indeed, You Have No Security Against It. That Is The Bargain. Theology Says To You In Effect, 'admit God And With Him The Risk Of A Few Miracles, And I In Return Will Ratify Your Faith In Uniformity As Regards The Overwhelming Majority Of Events.

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

There Is Someone That I Love Even Though I Don't Approve Of What He Does. There Is Someone I Accept Though Some Of His Thoughts And Actions Revolt Me. There Is Someone I Forgive Though He Hurts The People I Love The Most. That Person Is......me.

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

The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next.

Yes, I Know,' Interrupted Puddleglum. 'and Few Return To The Sunlit Lands. You Needn't Say It Again. You Are A Chap Of One Idea, Aren't You?

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

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?

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

I Think God Wants Us To Love Him More, Not To Love Others Less.

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

That Is The Key To History. Terrific Energy Is Expended - Civilizations Are Built Up - Excellent Institutions Devised; But Each Time Something Goes Wrong. Some Fatal Flaw Always Brings The Selfish And Cruel People To The Top, And Then It All Slides Back Into Misery And Ruin. In Fact, The Machine Conks. It Seems To Start Up All Right And Runs A Few Yards, And Then It Breaks Down.

Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

When Golden Moments Come, When God Enables One Really To Pray Without Words, Who But A Fool Would Reject The Gift?

The Vice I Am Talking Of Is Pride Or Self-conceit: And The Virtue Opposite To It, In Christian Morals, Is Called Humility...according To Christian Teachers, The Essential Vice, The Utmost Evil, Is Pride. Unchastity, Anger, Greed, Drunkenness, And All That, Are Mere Flea Bites In Comparison: It Was Through Pride That The Devil Became The Devil: Pride Leads To Every Other Vice: It Is The Complete Anti-god State Of Mind.

Edmund, Who Was Becoming A Nastier Person Every Minute, Thought That He Had Scored A Great Success, And Went On At Once To Say, 'there She Goes Again. What's The Matter With Her?

The Proper Aim Of Giving Is To Put The Recipient In A State Where He No Longer Needs Our Gifts...thus A Heavy Task Is Laid Upon Gift-love. It Must Work Toward Its Own Abdication. We Must Aim At Making Ourselves Superfluous. The Hour When We Can Say 'they Need Me No Longer' Should Be Our Reward. But The Instinct, Simply In Its Own Nature, Has No Power To Fulfill This Law.

Hell Is A State Of Mind -- Ye Never Said A Truer Word. And Every State Of Mind, Left To Itself, Every Shutting Up Of The Creature Within The Dungeon Of Its Own Mind -- Is, In The End, Hell. But Heaven Is Not A State Of Mind. Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly.

The Christian Is In A Different Position From Other People Who Are Trying To Be Good. They Hope, By Being Good, To Please God If There Is One; Or — If They Think There Is Not — At Least They Hope To Deserve Approval From Good Men. But The Christian Thinks Any Good He Does Comes From The Christ-life Inside Him. He Does Not Think God Will Love Us Because We Are Good, But That God Will Make Us Good Because He Loves Us; Just As The Roof Of A Greenhouse Does Not Attract The Sun Because It Is Bright, But Becomes Bright Because The Sun Shines On It.

Atheists Express Their Rage Against God Although In Their View He Does Not Exist.

Christian Inspirational

How Could An Idiotic Universe Have Produced Creatures Whose Mere Dreams Are So Much Stronger, Better, Subtler Than Itself?

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

Who Can Duly Adore That Love Which Will Open The High Gates To A Prodigal Who Is Brought In Kicking, Struggling, Resentful, And Darting His Eyes In Every Direction For A Chance Of Escape? The Words Compelle Intrare, Compel Them To Come In, Have Been So Abused By Wicked Men That We Shudder At Them; But, Properly Understood, They Plumb The Depth Of The Divine Mercy. The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Man, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven. Our Merriment Must Be Between People Who Take Each Other Seriously.

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

Tribulations Cannot Cease Until God Either Sees Us Remade Or Sees That Our Remaking Is Now Hopeless.

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

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

Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

The Man In Christ Rose Again, Not Only The God.

I Never Exactly Made A Book. It's Rather Like Taking Dictation. I Was Given Things To Say.

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

I Have At Last Come To The End Of The Faerie Queene: And Though I Say "at Last", I Almost Wish He Had Lived To Write Six Books More As He Had Hoped To Do — So Much Have I Enjoyed It.

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.

Now The Trouble About Trying To Make Yourself Stupider Than You Really Are Is That You Very Often Succeed.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest." He Also Said: "no Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally - And Often Far More - Worth Reading At The Age Of 50 And Beyond.

Any Amount Of Theology Can Now Be Smuggled Into People's Minds Under The Cover Of Fiction Without Their Knowing It.

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.

The Man Is A Humbug — A Vulgar, Shallow, Self-satisfied Mind, Absolutely Inaccessible To The Complexities And Delicacies Of The Real World. He Has The Journalist's Air Of Being A Specialist In Everything, Of Taking In All Points Of View And Being Always On The Side Of The Angels: He Merely Annoys A Reader Who Has The Least Experience Of Knowing Things, Of What Knowing Is Like. There Is Not Two Pence Worth Of Real Thought Or Real Nobility In Him. But He Isn't Dull.

I Wonder Do The Gods Know What It Feels Like To Be A Man.

Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

We Were Talking Of Dragons, Tolkien And I In A Berkshire Bar. The Big Workman Who Had Sat Silent And Sucked His Pipe All The Evening, From His Empty Mug With Gleaming Eye Glanced Towards Us: "i Seen 'em Myself!" He Said Fiercely.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

Those Who Do Not Think About Their Own Sins Make Up For It By Thinking Incessantly About The Sins Of Others.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even When We Talk It About God.

Think Of A Country Where People Were Admired For Running Away In Battle, Or Where A Man Felt Proud Of Double-crossing All The People Who Had Been Kindest To Him. You Might Just As Well Try To Imagine A Country Where Two And Two Made Five.

At Other Times It Feels Like Being Mildly Drunk, Or Concussed. There Is A Sort Of Invisible Blanket Between The World And Me. I Find It Hard To Take In What Anyone Says.

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

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

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.

The Story Itself Should Force Its Moral Upon You. You Find Out What The Moral Is By Writing The Story.

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen Of Narnia.

In Coming To Understand Anything We Are Rejecting The Facts As They Are For Us In Favour Of The Facts As They Are.

I Could Well Believe That It Is God's Intention, Since We Have Refused Milder Remedies, To Compel [christians] Into Unity, By Persecution Even. Satan Is Without Doubt Nothing Else Than A Hammer In The Hand Of A Benevolent And Severe God.

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.

100 Per Cent Of Us Die, And The Percentage Cannot Be Increased.

I Pray Because I Can't Help Myself.

He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.

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

Pain And Pleasure

...we Sacrifice Other Species To Our Own Not Because Our Own Has Any Objective Metaphysical Privilege Over Others, But Simply Because It Is Ours. It May Be Very Natural To Have This Loyalty To Our Own Species, But Let Us Hear No More From The Naturalists About The "sentimentality" Of Anti-vivisectionists. If Loyalty To Our Own Species - Preference For Man Simply Because We Are Men - Is Not Sentiment, Then What Is?

Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

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.

After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Toward Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again. For However Important Chastity (or Courage, Or Truthfulness, Or Any Other Virtue) May Be, This Process Trains Us In Habits Of The Soul Which Are More Important Still. It Cures Our Illusions About Ourselves And Teaches Us To Depend On God. We Learn, On The One Hand, That We Cannot Trust Ourselves Even In Our Best Moments, And, On The Other, That We Need Not Despair Even In Our Worst, For Our Failures Are Forgiven.

The Truth Is, Of Course, That What One Regards As Interruptions Are Precisely One's Life.

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

When An Artist Is In The Strict Sense Working, He Of Course Takes Into Account The Existing Tastes, Interests And Capacity Of His Audience. These No Less Than The Language , The Marble, The Paint, Are Part Of His Aw Material.; To Be Used, Tamed, Sublimated, Not Ignored Or Defied. Haughty Indifference To Them Is Not Genius, It Is Laziness And Incompetence.

And He Writhed Inside At What Seemed The Cruelty And Unfairness Of The Demand. He Had Not Yet Learned That If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

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

Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.

Philanthropy Giving

Every Time You Make A Choice You Are Turning The Central Part Of You, The Part Of You That Chooses, Into Something A Little Different From What It Was Before. And Taking Your Life As A Whole, With All Your Innumerable Choices, All Your Life Long You Are Slowly Turning This Central Thing Either Into A Heavenly Creature Or Into A Hellish Creature...

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

The Very Man Who Has Argued You Down, Will Sometimes Be Found, Years Later, To Have Been Influenced By What You Said

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.

The Choice Of Every Lost Soul Can Be Expressed In The Words "better To Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven." There Is Always Something They Insist On Keeping, Even At The Price Of Misery.

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.

God Has Infinite Attention, Infinite Leisure To Spare For Each One Of Us. He Doesn't Have To Take Us In The Line. You're As Much Alone With Him As If You Were The Only Thing He'd Ever Created.

In The Ancient World Individuals Have Sold Themselves As Slaves, In Order To Eat. So In Society. Here Is A Witch-doctor Who Can Save Us From The Sorcerers - A War-lord Who Can Save Us From The Barbarians - A Church That Can Save Us From Hell. Give Them What They Ask, Give Ourselves To Them Bound And Blindfold, If Only They Will! Perhaps The Terrible Bargain Will Be Made Again. We Cannot Blame Men For Making It. We Can Hardly Wish Them Not To. Yet We Can Hardly Bear That They Should.

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.

Of Course All Children's Literature Is Not Fantastic, So All Fantastic Books Need Not Be Children's Books. It Is Still Possible, Even In An Age So Ferociously Anti-romantic As Our Own, To Write Fantastic Stories For Adults: Though You Will Usually Need To Have Made A Name In Some More Fashionable Kind Of Literature Before Anyone Will Publish Them.

But If You Are A Poor Creature--poisoned By A Wretched Up-bringing In Some House Full Of Vulgar Jealousies And Senseless Quarrels--saddled, By No Choice Of Your Own, With Some Loathsome Sexual Perversion--nagged Day In And Day Out By An Inferiority Complex That Makes You Snap At Your Best Friends--do Not Despair. He Knows All About It. You Are One Of The Poor Whom He Blessed. He Knows What A Wretched Machine You Are Trying To Drive. Keep On. Do What You Can. One Day He Will Fling It On The Scrap-heap And Give You A New One. And Then You May Astonish Us All - Not Least Yourself.

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. He Himself Is The Fuel Our Spirits Were Designed To Burn, Or The Food Our Spirits Were Designed To Feed On. There Is No Other. That Is Why It Is Just No Good Asking God To Make Us Happy In Our Own Way Without Bothering About Religion. God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There.

You Don't Have A Soul. You Are A Soul. You Have A Body.

First, I Do Not Sit Down At My Desk To Put Into Verse Something That Is Already Clear In My Mind. If It Were Clear In My Mind, I Should Have No Incentive Or Need To Write About It. We Do Not Write In Order To Be Understood; We Write In Order To Understand.

And The Seriousness With Which The Other Party Takes My Words Always Raises The Doubt Whether I Have Taken Them Seriously Enough Myself.

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.

Isn't It Funny The Way Some Combinations Of Words Can Give You--almost Apart From Their Meaning--a Thrill Like Music?

People Shouldn't Call For Demons Unless They Really Mean What They Say.

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

Other Than Heaven, The Only Place Where One's Heart Is Completely Safe From The Dangers Of Love Is Hell.

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

I Have Often Repented Of Speech But Hardly Ever Of Silence.

If We Discover A Desire Within Us That Nothing In This World Can Satisfy, Also We Should Begin To Wonder If Perhaps We Were Created For Another World.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

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.

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.

Good And Evil Increase At Compound Interest. That's Why The Little Decisions We Make Every Day Are Of Infinite Importance.

Decisions We Make

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

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

No Philosophical Theory Which I Have Yet Come Across Is A Radical Improvement On The Words Of Genesis, That 'in The Beginning God Made Heaven And Earth'.

Humility Is Self-forgetfulness.

In God's Dimension, So To Speak, You Find A Being Who Is Three Persons While Remaining One Being, Just As A Cube Is Six Squares While Remaining One Cube.

Those Of Us Who Are Blamed When Old For Reading Childish Books Were Blamed When Children For Reading Books Too Old For 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.

It Will Not Bother Me In The Hour Of Death To Reflect That I Have Been "had For A Sucker" By Any Number Of Imposters But It Would Be A Torment To Know That One Had Refused Even One Person In Need.

The Psalmists In Telling Everyone To Praise God Are Doing What All Men Do When They Speak Of What They Care About.

You Are Certainly Under The Guidance Of The Holy Ghost Or You Wouldn't Have Come Where You Now Are.

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

The Cross Comes Before The Crown And Tomorrow Is A Monday Morning!

It Is Christ Himself, Not The Bible, Who Is The True Word Of God. The Bible, Read In The Right Spirit And With The Guidance Of Good Teachers, Will Bring Us To Him.

I Have Seen Landscapes . . . Which, Under A Particular Light, Make Me Feel That At Any Moment A Giant Might Raise His Head Over The Next Ridge.

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness.

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?

It Takes Courage To Live Through Suffering; And It Takes Honesty To Observe It.

I Can Answer That Only By Hearsay, Returned The Guide, For Pain Is A Secret Which He Has Shared With Your Race And Not With Mine; And You Would Find It As Hard To Explain Suffering To Me As I Would Find It To Reveal To You The Secrets Of The Mountain People. But Those Who Know Best Say This, That Any Liberal Man Would Choose The Pain Of This Desire, Even For Ever, Rather Than The Peace Of Feeling It No Longer; And That Though The Best Thing Is To Have, The Next Best Is To Want, And The Worst Of All Is Not To Want.

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

When Humans Should Have Become As Perfect In Voluntary Obedience As The Inanimate Creation Is In Its Lifeless Obedience, Then They Will Put On Its Glory, Or Rather That Greater Glory Of Which Nature Is Only The First Sketch.

Mercy Detached From Justice Grows Unmerciful.

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