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

-C. S. Lewis

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Where Men Are Forbidden

C. S. Lewis

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

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

If Anyone Present Wishes To Make Me The Subject Of His Wit, I Am Very Much At His Service--with My Sword--whenever He Has Leisure.

For Narnia And For Aslan!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

They Tell Me, Lord, That When I Seem To Be In Speech With You. Since But One Voice Is Heard, It

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.

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.

Unless Christianity Is Wholly False, The Perception Of Ourselves Which We Have In Moments Of Shame Must Be The Only True One.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

Things Always Work According To Their Nature.

I Have Seen Great Beauty Of Spirit In Some Who Were Great Sufferers. I Have Seen Men, For The Most Part, Grow Better Not Worse With Advancing Years, And I Have Seen The Last Illness Produce Treasures Of Fortitude And Meekness From Most Unpromising Subjects.

Yes, Pride Is A Perpetual Nagging Temptation. Keep On Knocking It On The Head, But Don't Be Too Worried About It. As Long As One Knows One Is Proud, One Is Safe From The Worst Form Of Pride.

It Is After You Have Realized That There Is A Real Moral Law, And A Power Behind The Law, And That You Have Broken That Law And Put Yourself Wrong With That Power -- It Is After All This, And Not A Moment Sooner, That Christianity Begins To Talk.

To Every Soul, God Will Look Like Its First Love Because He Is Its First Love. Your Place In Heaven Will Seem To Be Made For You And You Alone, Because You Were Made For It - Made For It Stitch By Stitch As A Glove Is Made For A Hand.

Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms.

A Concentrated Mind And A Sitting Body Make For Better Prayer Than A Kneeling Body And A Mind Half Asleep.

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

Obedience Is The Road To Freedom.

God Lends Us A Little Of His Reasoning Powers And That Is How We Think: He Puts A Little Of His Love Into Us And That Is How We Love One Another. When You Teach A Child Writing, You Hold Its Hand While It Forms The Letters: That Is, It Forms The Letters Because You Are Forming Them. We Love And Reason Because God Loves And Reasons And Holds Our Hand While We Do It.

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

If Tribulation Is A Necessary Element In Redemption, We Must Anticipate That It Will Never Cease Till God Sees The World To Be Either Redeemed Or No Further Redeemable.

As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.

If, As I Can't Help Suspecting, The Dead Also Feel The Pains Of Separation (and This May Be One Of Their Purgatorial Sufferings), Then For Both Lovers, And For All Pairs Of Lovers Without Exception, Bereavement Is A Universal And Integral Part Of Our Experience Of Love.

To The Ancients, Friendship Seemed The Happiest And Most Fully Human Of All Loves... The Modern World In Comparison, Ignores It.

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers. If You Are Thinking Of Becoming A Christian, I Warn You You Are Embarking On Something Which Is Going To Take The Whole Of You, Brains And All.

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.

Giant Wimbleweather Burst Into One Of Those Not Very Intelligent Laughs To Which The Nicer Sort Of Giants Are So Liable. He Checked Himself At Once And Looked As Grace As A Turnip By The Time Reepicheep Discovered Where The Noise Came From.

Why Should Your Majesty Think It? My Own Plans Are Made. While I May, I Sail East In Dawn Treader. When She Fails Me, I Row East In My Coracle. When That Sinks, Shall I Paddle East With My Four Paws. Then, When I Can Swim No Longer, If I Have Not Yet Reached Aslan's Country, There Shall I Sink With My Nose To The Sunrise... And Peepiceek Will Be Head Of Talking Mice In Narnia

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...

But As For Aslan Himself, The Beavers And The Children Didn't Know What To Do Or Say When They Saw Him. People Who Have Not Been In Narnia Sometimes Think That A Thing Cannot Be Good And Terrible At The Same Time. If The Children Had Ever Thought So, They Were Cured Of It Now. For When They Tried To Look At Aslan's Face They Just Caught A Glimpse Of The Golden Mane And The Great, Royal, Solemn, Overwhelming Eyes; And Then They Found They Couldn't Look At Him And Went All Trembly.

It Isn't Narnia, You Know," Sobbed Lucy. "it's You. We Shan't Meet You There. And How Can We Live, Never Meeting You?" "but You Shall Meet Me, Dear One," Said Aslan. "are -are You There Too, Sir?" Said Edmund. "i Am," Said Aslan. "but There I Have Another Name. You Must Learn To Know Me By That Name. This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

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

Our Problem With Desire Is That We Want Too Little.

The Right Direction Leads Not Only To Peace But To Knowledge.

Right Direction

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.

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.

They Have Chosen Cunning Instead Of Belief. Their Prison Is Only In Their Minds, Yet They Are In That Prison; And So Afraid Of Being Taken In That They Cannot Be Taken Out.

You Die And Die And Then You Are Beyond Death.

When Christ Died, He Died For You Individually Just As Much As If You Had Been The Only Person In The World.

Nothing Less Will Shake A Man — Or At Any Rate A Man Like Me — Out Of His Merely Verbal Thinking And His Merely Notional Beliefs. He Has To Be Knocked Silly Before He Comes To His Senses. Only Torture Will Bring Out The Truth. Only Under Torture Does He Discover It Himself.

Do You Not Know How Bashful Friendship Is? Friends - Comrades - Do Not Look At Each Other. Friendship Would Be Ashamed.

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.

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

We Delight To Praise What We Enjoy Because The Praise Not Merely Expresses But Completes The Enjoyment; It Is Its Appointed Consummation. It Is Not Out Of Compliment That Lovers Keep On Telling One Another How Beautiful They Are; The Delight Is Incomplete Till It Is Expressed.

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

Christ Says, 'give Me All. I Don't Want So Much Of Your Time And So Much Of Your Money And So Much Of Your Work: I Want You.'

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

I Can Promise You None Of These Things. No Sphere Of Usefulness; You Are Not Needed There At All. No Scope Of Your Talents; Only Forgiveness For Having Perverted Them. No Atmosphere Of Inquiry, For I Will Bring You To The Land Not Of Questions But Of Answers, And You Shall See The Face Of God. (pg 40)

Thirty Was So Strange For Me. I've Really Had To Come To Terms With The Fact That I Am Now A Walking And Talking Adult.

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?

Each Time You Fall He'll Pick You Up. He Knows Your Own Efforts Are Never Going To Bring You Anywhere Near Perfection

The Only Moral That Is Of Any Value Is That Which Arises Inevitably From The Whole Cast Of The Author's Mind.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

Christianity Seems At First To Be All About Morality, All About Duties And Rules And Guilt And Virtue, Yet It Leads You On, Out Of All That, Into Something Beyond. One Has A Glimpse Of A Country Where They Do Not Talk Of Those Things, Except Perhaps As A Joke. Every One There Is Filled Full With What We Should Call Goodness As A Mirror Is Filled With Light. But They Do Not Call It Goodness. They Do Not Call It Anything. They Are Not Thinking Of It. They Are Too Busy Looking At The Source From Which It Comes.

When You And I Met, The Meeting Was Over Very Shortly, It Was Nothing. Now It Is Growing Something As We Remember It, What Will It Be When I Remember It As I Lie Down To Die, What It Makes In Me All My Days Till Then - That Is The Real Meeting. The Other Is Only The Beginning Of It. You Say You Have Poets In Your World. Do They Not Teach You This?

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

An Open Mind, In Questions That Are Not Ultimate, Is Useful. But An Open Mind About The Ultimate Foundations Either Of Theoretical Or Of Practical Reason Is Idiocy. If A Man's Mind Is Open On These Things, Let His Mouth At Least Be Shut. He Can Say Nothing To The Purpose. Outside The Tao There Is No Ground For Criticizing Either The Tao Or Anything Else.

And What About You? You Must Be Some Kind Of Beardless Dwarf?...you Mean To Say, That You're A Daughter Of Eve?...y-yes, But, You Are In Fact... Human?

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

Meaningless Combinations Of Words Do Not Suddenly Acquire Meaning Simply Because We Prefix To Them The Two Other Words ' God Can'.

The Mark Of Friendship Is Not That Help Will Be Given When The Pinch Comes (of Course It Will) But That, Having Been Given, It Makes No Difference At All.

From The Moment A Creature Becomes Aware Of God As God And Of Itself As Self, The Terrible Alternative Of Choosing God Or Self For The Centre Is Opened To It.

The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.

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.

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.

To Please God… To Be A Real Ingredient In The Divine Happiness… To Be Loved By God, Not Merely Pitied, But Delighted In As An Artist Delights In His Work Or A Father In A Son- It Seems Impossible, A Weight Or Burden Of Glory Which Our Thoughts Can Hardly Sustain. But So It Is.

The Laws Of Thought Are Also The Laws Of Things: Of Things In The Remotest Space And The Remotest Time.

Growing Maturity Is Marked By The Increasing Liberties We Take With Our Travelling... We Made The Discovery (some People Never Make It) That Real Books Can Be Taken On A Journey And That Hours Of Golden Reading Can So Be Added To Its Other Delights.

Our Father Refreshes Us On The Journey With Some Pleasant Inns, But Will Not Encourage Us To Mistake Them For Home.

Feelings, And Feelings, And Feelings. Let Me Try Thinking Instead.

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

He That But Looketh On A Plate Of Ham And Eggs To Lust After It Hath Already Committed Breakfast With It In His Heart

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

We Do Not Enjoy A Story Fully At The First Reading. Not Till The Curiosity, The Sheer Narrative Lust, Has Been Given Its Sop And Laid Asleep, Are We At Leisure To Savour The Real Beauties.

Until The Theologians And The Ordained Clergy Begin To Communicate With Ordinary People In The Vernacular, In A Way That They Can Understand, I’m Going To Have To Do This Sort Of Thing.

Here, I Think, Lies Our Real Dilemma. Probably We Cannot, Certainly We Shall Not, Retrace Our Steps. We Are Tamed Animals (some With Kind, Some With Cruel, Masters) And Should Probably Starve If We Got Out Of Our Cage. That Is One Horn Of The Dilemma. But In An Increasingly Planned Society, How Much Of What I Value Can Survive? That Is The Other Horn.

There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.

The Old Field Of Space, Time, Matter, And The Senses Is To Be Weeded, Dug, And Sown For A New Crop. We May Be Tired Of That Old Field: God Is Not.

God Allows Us To Experience The Low Points Of Life In Order To Teach Us Lessons That We Could Learn In No Other Way.

Wherever Any Precept Of Traditional Morality Is Simply Challenged To Produce Its Credentials, As Though The Burden Of Proof Lay On It, We Have Taken The Wrong Position.

Burden Of Proof

We Who Defend Christianity Find Ourselves Constantly Opposed Not By The Irreligion Of Our Headers But By Their Real Religion.

We Live, In Fact, In A World Starved For Solitude, Silence, And Private: And Therefore Starved For Meditation And True Friendship.

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

For Pride Is Spiritual Cancer: It Eats Up The Very Possibility Of Love, Or Contentment, Or Even Common Sense.

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

The Humblest Praise Most, While Cranks & Malcontents Praise Least. Praise Almost Seems To Be Inner Health Made Audible

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

The Full Acting Out Of The Self's Surrender To God Therefore Demands Pain: This Action, To Be Perfect, Must Be Done From The Pure Will To Obey, In The Absence, Or In The Teeth, Of Inclination

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

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.

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.

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.

The Incalculable Winds Of Fantasy And Music And Poetry, The Mere Face Of A Girl, The Song Of A Bird, Or The Sight Of A Horizon, Are Always Blowing Evil’s Whole Structure Away.

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

Heaven Offers Nothing That A Mercenary Soul Can Desire.

To Be A Christian Means To Forgive The Inexcusable Because God Has Forgiven The Inexcusable In You.

And Out Of That Hopeless Attempt Has Come Nearly All That We Call Human History—money, Poverty, Ambition, War, Prostitution, Classes, Empires, Slavery—the Long Terrible Story Of Man Trying To Find Something Other Than God Which Will Make Him Happy.

Of Course God Does Not Consider You Hopeless. If He Did He Would Not Be Moving You To Seek Him (and He Obviously Is). What Is Going On In You At Present Is Simply The Beginning Of The Treatment. Continue Seeking With Cheerful Seriousness. Unless He Wanted You, You Would Not Be Wanting Him.

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

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

Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. 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.

And Now, What Does It All Matter? It Matters More Than Anything Else In The World. The Whole Dance, Or Drama, Or Pattern Of This Three-personal Life Is To Be Played Out In Each One Of Us: Or (putting It The Other Way Round) Each One Of Us Has Got To Enter That Pattern, Take His Place In That Dance. There Is No Other Way To The Happiness For Which We Were Made.

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

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

Most Of Us Need The Crutch At Times; But Of Course It Is Idiotic To Use The Crutch When Our Own Legs (our Own Loves, Tastes, Habits Etc.) Can Do The Journey On Their Own.

Christianity Is Not A Patent Medicine. Christianity Claims To Give An Account Of Facts - To Tell You What The Real Universe Is Like. Its Account Of The Universe May Be True, Or It May Not, And Once The Question Is Really Before You, Then Your Natural Inquisitiveness Must Make You Want To Know The Answer. If Christianity Is Untrue, Then No Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, However Helpful It Might Be: If It Is True, Every Honest Man Will Want To Believe It, Even If It Gives Him No Help At All.

The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is To Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way.

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.

You And I Have Need Of The Strongest Spell That Can Be Found To Wake Us From The Evil Enchantment Of Worldliness.

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.

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.

We Can Never Know What Might Have Been But What Is To Come Is Another Matter Entirely

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.

Knock And It Shall Be Opened.' But Does Knocking Mean Hammering And Kicking The Door Like A Maniac?

God Is The Only Comfort, He Is Also The Supreme Terror: The Thing We Most Need And The Thing We Most Want To Hide From.

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

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves.

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

We Do Not Truly See Light, We Only See Slower Things Lit By It, So That For Us Light Is On The Edge-the Last Thing We Know Before Things Become Too Swift For Us.

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

Part Of Every Misery Is, So To Speak, The Misery's Shadow Or Reflection: The Fact That You Don't Merely Suffer But Have To Keep On Thinking About The Fact That You Suffer. I Not Only Live Each Endless Day In Grief, But Live Each Day Thinking About Living Each Day In Grief.

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

I Wish They Would Remember That The Charge To Peter Was "feed My Sheep", Not "try Experiments On My Rats", Or Even "teach My Performing Dogs New Tricks".

You Have Not Chosen One Another, But I Have Chosen You For One Another.

Christian Friends

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'.

When We Are Such As He Can Love Without Impediment, We Shall In Fact Be Happy.

[god] Will Not Be Used As A Convenience. Men Or Nations Who Think They Can Revive The Faith In Order To Make A Good Society Might Just As Well Think They Can Use The Stairs Of Heaven As A Shortcut To The Nearest Chemist's Shop.

Grief Is Like A Bomber Circling Round And Dropping Its Bombs Each Time The Circle Brings It Overhead; Physical Pain Is Like The Steady Barrage On A Trench In World War One, Hours If It With No Let-up For A Moment. Thought Is Never Static Pain Often Is... Is It Not Yet Enough?

We Never Find Out The Strength Of The Evil Impulse Inside Us Until We Try To Fight It.

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.

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'.

There Is A Kind Of Happiness And Wonder That Makes You Serious. It Is Too Good To Waste On Jokes.

Do Not Look Sad. We Shall Meet Soon Again." "please, Aslan", Said Lucy,"what Do You Call Soon?" "i Call All Times Soon" Said Aslan; And Instantly He Was Vanished Away.

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

One Of The Most Cowardly Things Ordinary People Do Is To Shut Their Eyes To Facts.

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

It Is Good That The Window Should Be Transparent, Because The Street Or Garden Beyond It Is Opaque. How If You Saw Through The Garden Too? It Is No Use Trying To 'see Through' [everything]. If You See Through Everything, Then Everything Is Transparent. But A Wholly Transparent World Is An Invisible World. To 'see Through' All Things Is The Same As Not To See.

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.

Always Winter But Never Christmas.

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Emerson Said, Do You Love Me? Means Do You See The Same Truth?-or At Least, "do You Care About The Same Truth?

If The Immutable Heart Can Be Grieved By The Puppets Of Its Own Making, It Is Divine Omnipotence, No Other, That Has Subjected It, Freely, And In A Humility That Passes Understanding. If The World Exists Not Chiefly That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us, Yet That Very Fact, On A Deeper Level, Is So For Our Sakes. If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

To Every Man, In His Acquaintance With A New Art, There Comes A Moment When That Which Before Was Meaningless First Lifts, As It Were, One Corner Of The Curtain That Hides Its Mystery, And Reveals, In A Burst Of Delight Which Later And Fuller Understanding Can Hardly Ever Equal, One Glimpse Of The Indefinite Possibilities Within.

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.

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

The New Testament Does Not Envisage Solitary Religion; Regular Assembly For Worship Is Everywhere In The Epistles.

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

Walking And Talking Are Two Very Great Pleasures, But It Is A Mistake To Combine Them. Our Own Noise Blots Out The Sounds And Silences Of The Outdoor World; And Talking Leads Almost Inevitably To Smoking, And Then Farewell To Nature As Far As One Of Our Senses Is Concerned. The Only Friend To Walk With Is One Who So Exactly Shares Your Taste For Each Mood Of The Countryside That A Glance, A Halt, Or At Most A Nudge, Is Enough To Assure Us That The Pleasure Is Shared.

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

On The Whole, God’s Love For Us Is A Much Safer Subject To Think About Than Our Love For Him. Nobody Can Always Have Devout Feelings: And Even If We Could, Feelings Are Not What God Principally Cares About. Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

I'd Sooner Live Among People Who Don't Cheat At Cards Than Among People Who Are Earnest About Not Cheating At Cards.

I Don't Want Him To Live Forever, And I Know That He's Not Going To Live Forever Whether I Want Him To Or Not.

We Meet No Ordinary People In Our Lives.

Nothing Is Very Strong: Strong Enough To Steal Away A Man's Best Years Not In Sweet Sins But In A Dreary Flickering Of The Mind Over It Knows Not What And Knows Not Why, In The Gratification Of Curiosities So Feeble That The Man Is Only Half Aware Of Them, In Drumming Of Fingers And Kicking Of Heels, In Whistling Tunes That He Does Not Like, Or In The Long, Dim Labyrinth Of Reveries That Have Not Even Lust Or Ambition To Give Them A Relish, But Which, Once Chance Association Has Started Them, The Creature Is Took Weak And Fuddled To Shake Off.

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

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

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

There Have Been Times When I Think We Do Not Desire Heaven But More Often I Find Myself Wondering Whether, In Our Heart Of Hearts, We Have Ever Desired Anything Else.

It Is In Their 'good' Characters That Novelists Make, Unawares, The Most Shocking Self- Revelations.

There Is A Difference Between A Private Devotional Life And A Corporate One. Solemnity Is Proper In Church, But Things That Are Proper In Church Are Not Necessarily Proper Outside, And Vice Versa.

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

All Killing Is Not Murder Any More Than All Sexual Intercourse Is Adultery.

Even The Best Christian That Ever Lived Is Not Acting On His Own Steam--he Is Only Nourishing Or Protecting A Life He Could Never Have Acquired By His Own Efforts.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

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

Almost Certainly God Is Not In Time. His Life Does Not Consist Of Moments One Following Another...ten-thirty-- And Every Other Moment From The Beginning Of The World--is Always Present For Him. If You Like To Put It This Way, He Has All Eternity In Which To Listen To The Split Second Of Prayer Put Up By A Pilot As His Plane Crashes In Flames.

The Change Which The Writing Wrought In Me (and Of Which I Did Not Write) Was Only A Beginning; Only To Prepare Me For The Gods' Surgery. They Used My Own Pen To Probe My Wound.

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

An 'impersonal God'-well And Good. A Subjective God Of Beauty, Truth And Goodness, Inside Our Own Heads-better Still. A Formless Life-force Surging Through Us, A Vast Power Which We Can Tap-best Of All. But God Himself, Alive, Pulling At The Other End Of The Cord, Perhaps Approaching At An Infinite Speed, The Hunter, King, Husband-that Is Quite Another Matter.

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.

And That's Why, When They Want To Get Rid Of Anyone, They Usually Bring Him Down Here (like They Were Doing With Me) And Say They'll Leave Him To The Ghosts. But I Always Wondered If They Didn't Really Drown 'em Or Cut Their Throats. I Never Quite Believed In The Ghosts. But Those Two Cowards You've Just Shot Believed All Right. They Were More Scared Of Taking Me To My Death Than I Was Of Going.

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

Imagine Yourself As A Living House.

Christ Wants Us To Have A Child's Heart But A Grown-up's Head.

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

I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road. A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Til You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On. Evil Can Be Undone, But It Cannot 'develop' Into Good. Time Does Not Heal It. The Spell Must Be Unwound, Bit By Bit, 'with Backward Mutters Of Dissevering Power' --or Else Not.

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

The Hard Sayings Of Our Lord Are Wholesome To Those Only Who Find Them Hard.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

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

The Real Oxford Is A Close Corporation Of Jolly, Untidy, Lazy, Good-for-nothing Humorous Old Men, Who Have Been Electing Their Own Successors Ever Since The World Began And Who Intend To Go On With It. They'll Squeeze Under The Revolution Or Leap Over It When The Time Comes, Don't You Worry.

We Are Not Necessarily Doubting That God Will Do The Best For Us; We Are Wondering How Painful The Best Will Turn Out To Be.

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

The Game Is To Have Them All Running About With Fire Extinguishers When There Is A Flood, And All Crowding To That Side Of The Boat Which Is Already Nearly Gunwale Under.

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

Once A Man Is United To God, How Could He Not Live Forever?

The Poison Was Brewed In These West Lands But It Has Spat Itself Everywhere By Now. However Far You Went You Would Find The Machines, The Crowded Cities, The Empty Thrones, The False Writings, The Barren Beds: Men Maddened With False Promises And Soured With True Miseries, Worshipping The Iron Works Of Their Own Hands, Cut Off From Earth Their Mother And From The Father In Heaven. You Might Go East So Far The East Became West And You Returned To Britain Across The Great Ocean, But Even So You Would Not Have Come Out Anywhere Into The Light. The Shadow Of One Dark Wing Is Over All Tellus.

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

Human Beings, All Over The Earth, Have This Curious Idea That They Ought To Believe In A Certain Way, And Can't Really Get Rid Of It.

In Your World, I Have Another Name. You Should Know Me By It.

A Great Deal Of What Is Being Published By Writers In The Religious Tradition Is A Scandal And Is Actually Turning People Away From The Church. The Liberal Writers Who Are Continually Accommodating And Whittling Down The Truth Of The Gospel Are Responsible.

We Who Have Been True Readers All Our Life Fully Realize The Enormous Of Our Being Which We Owe To Authors.

Like A Good Chess Player, Satan Is Always Trying To Maneuver You Into A Position Where You Can Save Your Castle Only By Losing Your Bishop.

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