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Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

-C. S. Lewis

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Why Love, If Losing

C. S. Lewis

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Why Love, If Losing Hurts So Much? I Have No Answers Anymore: Only The Life I Have Lived. Twice In That Life I've Been Given The Choice: As A Boy And As A Man. The Boy Chose Safety, The Man Chooses Suffering. The Pain Now Is Part Of The Happiness Then. That's The Deal.

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

We Regard God As An Airman Regards His Parachute; It's There For Emergencies But He Hopes He'll Never Have To Use It.

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.

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

Unless The Religious Claims Of The Bible Are Again Acknowledged, Its Literary Claims Will, I Think, Be Given Only 'mouth Honour' And That Decreasingly.

And There We All Were, As Invisible As You Could Wish To See.

The Death Of A Beloved Is An Amputation.

Without The Aid Of Trained Emotions The Intellect Is Powerless Against The Animal Organism.

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

Exception To The Rule

When The Opposite Of Your Prayer Occurs, Your Prayer Hasn't Been Ignored; It's Been Considered & Refused For Your Ultimate Good.

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

No Emotion Is, In Itself, A Judgement; In That Sense All Emotions And Sentiments Are Alogical. But They Can Be Reasonable Or Unreasonable As They Conform To Reason Or Fail To Conform. The Heart Never Takes The Place Of The Head: But It Can, And Should, Obey 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.

There Is No Other Day. All Days Are Present Now. This Moment Contains All Moments.

Life Is Too Deep For Words, So Don't Try To Describe It, Just Live It.

Self Improvement

I Have Always At Least, Ever Since I Can Remember Had A Kind Of Longing For Death.

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe A Price Worth Paying For Free Will...then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

At Home, Besides Being Peter Or Jane, We Also Bear A General Character; Husband Or Wife, Brother Or Sister, Chief, Colleague Or Subordinate. Not Among Friends. It Is An Affair Of Disentangled, Or Stripped, Minds. Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

I Need Christ, Not Something That Resembles Him.

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.

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

Lucy Said, 'we're So Afraid Of Being Sent Away, Aslan. And You Have Sent Us Back Into Our Own World So Often.' 'no Fear Of That,' Said Aslan. 'have You Not Guessed?' Their Hearts Leapt, And A Wild Hope Rose Within Them. 'there Was A Real Railway Accident,' Said Aslan Softly. 'your Father And Mother And All Of You Are- As You Used To Call It In The Shadowlands- Dead. The Term Is Over: The Holidays Have Begun. The Dream Is Ended: This Is The Morning.

But All Night, Aslan And The Moon Gazed Upon Each Other With Joyful And Unblinking Eyes.

Further Up And Further In!

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

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.

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.

Friendship, Then, Like The Other Natural Loves, Is Unable To Save Itself. In Reality, Because It Is Spiritual And Therefore Faces A Subtler Enemy, It Must, Even More Wholeheartedly Than They, Invoke The Divine Protection If It Hopes To Remain Sweet. For Consider How Narrow Its True Path Is. Is Must Not Become What The People Call A "mutual Admiration Society"; Yet If It Is Not Full Of Mutual Admiration, Of Appreciative Love, It Is Not Friendship At All.

God Loves Us Not Because We're Lovable, Because He Is Love. Not Because He Needs To Receive, Because He Delights To Give.

God Cannot Give Us A Happiness And Peace Apart From Himself, Because It Is Not There. There Is No Such Thing.

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

Do Not Dare Not To Dare.

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

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

As To...old Composers Like Schubert Or Beethoven, I Imagine That, While Modern Music Expresses Both Feeling, Thought And Imagination, They Expressed Pure Feeling. And You Know All Day Sitting At Work, Eating, Walking, Etc., You Have Hundreds Of Feelings That Can't Be Put Into Words. And That Is Why I Think That In A Sense Music Is The Highest Of The Arts, Because It Really Begins Where The Others Leave Off.

The Higher Animals Are In A Sense Drawn Into Man When He Loves Them And Makes Them (as He Does) Much More Nearly Human Than They Would Otherwise Be.

If Minds Are Wholly Dependent On Brains And Brains On Biochemistry, And Biochemistry (in The Long Run) On The Meaningless Flux Of The Atoms, I Cannot Understand How The Thought Of Those Minds Should Have Any More Significance Than The Sound Of The Wind In The Trees.

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

A Silly Idea Is Current That Good People Do Not Know What Temptation Means. This Is An Obvious Lie. Only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is... A Man Who Gives In To Temptation After Five Minutes Simply Does Not Know What It Would Have Been Like An Hour Later. That Is Why Bad People, In One Sense, Know Very Little About Badness. They Have Lived A Sheltered Life By Always Giving In.

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

But As For Lucy, She Was Always Gay And Golden-haired, And All Princes In Those Parts Desired Her To Be Their Queen, And Her Own People Called Her Queen Lucy The Valiant.

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

Christian Principles Are, Admittedly, Stricter Than The Others; But Then We Think You Will Get Help Towards Obeying Them Which You Will Not Get Towards Obeying The Others.

Perhaps Civilization Will Never Be Safe Until We Care For Something Else More Than We Care For It. The Hypothesis Has Certain Facts To Support It. As Far As Peace (which Is One Ingredient In Our Idea Of Civilization)is Concerned, I Think Many Would Now Agree That A Foreign Policy Dominated By Desire For Peace Is One Of The Many Roads That Lead To War.

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than He Is Of Any Other Slacker.

The Very Condition Of Having Friends Is That We Should Want Something Else Besides Friends. Where The Truthful Answer To The Question "do You See The Same Truth?" Would Be "i See Nothing And I Don't Care About The Truth; I Only Want A Friend," No Friendship Can Arise - Though Affection Of Course May. There Would Be Nothing For The Friendship To Be About; And Friendship Must Be About Something, Even If It Were Only An Enthusiasm For Dominoes Or White Mice. Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing; Those Who Are Going Nowhere Can Have No Fellow-travellers.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing.

Next To The Blessed Sacrament Itself, Your Neighbor Is The Holiest Object Presented To Your Senses.

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

The Proper Motto Is Not Be Good, Sweet Maid, And Let Who Can Be Clever, But Be Good Sweet Maid, And Don't Forget That This Involves Being As Clever As You Can. God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Any Other Slackers.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

Any Patch Of Sunlight In A Wood Will Show You Something About The Sun Which You Could Never Get From Reading Books On Astronomy. These Pure And Spontaneous Pleasures Are ‘patches Of Godlight’ In The Woods Of Our Experience.

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

That World Is Ended, As If It Had Never Been. Let The Race Of Adam And Eve Take Warning.

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.

The Human Qualities Of The Raw Materials Show Through. Naivety, Error, Contradiction, Even (as In The Cursing Psalms) Wickedness Are Not Removed. The Total Result Is Not "the Word Of God" In The Sense That Every Passage In Itself, Gives Impeccable Science Or History. It Carries The Word Of God.

No Great Wisdom Can Be Reached Without Sacrifice.

Without Sacrifice

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.

A Perfect Practice Of Christianity Would, Of Course, Consist In A Perfect Imitation Of The Life Of Christ -- I Mean, In So Far As It Was Applicable In One's Own Particular Circumstance. Not In An Idiotic Sense -- It Doesn't Mean That Every Christian Should Grow A Beard, Or Be A Bachelor, Or Become A Travelling Preacher. It Means That Every Single Act And Feeling, Every Experience, Whether Pleasant Or Unpleasant, Must Be Referred To God.

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.

Nothing Is Wonderful Except In The Abnormal, And Nothing Is Abnormal Until We Have Grasped The Norm.

I Write For The Unlearned About Things In Which I Am Unlearned Myself.

Believing Things On Authority Only Means Believing Them Because You Have Been Told Them By Someone You Think Trustworthy. Ninety-nine Per Cent Of The Things You Believe Are Believed On Authority... Every Historical Event In The World Is Believed On Authority. None Of Us Has Seen The Norman Conquest Or The Defeat Of The Armada.

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.

As Christians We Are Tempted To Make Unnecessary Concessions To Those Outside The Faith. We Give In Too Much. Now, I Don't Mean That We Should Run The Risk Of Making A Nuisance Of Ourselves By Witnessing At Improper Times, But There Comes A Time When We Must Show That We Disagree.

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.

No Thanks," Said Digory, "i Don't Know That I Care Much About Living On And On After Everyone I Know Is Dead. I'd Rather Live An Ordinary Time And Die And Go To Heaven.

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

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

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare.

Even In Literature And Art, No Man Who Bothers About Originality Will Ever Be Original: Whereas If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth (without Caring Twopence How Often It Has Been Told Before) You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Become Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

No One Ever Told Me That Grief Felt So Like Fear.

Nothing In Man Is Either Worse Or Better For Being Shared With The Beasts.

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.

We Want, In Fact, Not So Much A Father In Heaven As A Grandfather In Heaven: A Senile Benevolence Who, As They Say, "liked To See Young People Enjoying Themselves" And Whose Plan For The Universe Was Simply That It Might Be Truly Said At The End Of Each Day, "a Good Time Was Had By All."

An Obligation To Feel Can Freeze Feelings.

To The Glistening Eastern Sea, I Give You Queen Lucy, The Valiant. To The Great Western Wood, King Edmund The Just. To The Radiant Southern Sun, Queen Susan, The Gentle; And To The Clear Northern Sky I Give You King Peter, The Magnificent. Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen. May Your Wisdom Grace Us 'til The Stars Rain Down From The Heavens.

The Scotch Catechism Says That Man's Chief End Is 'to Glorify God And Enjoy Him Forever.' But We Shall Then Know That These Are The Same Thing. Fully To Enjoy Is To Glorify. In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

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.

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

In Your Life You Meet People. Some You Never Think About Again. Some, You Wonder What Happened To Them. There Are Some That You Wonder If They Ever Think About You. And Then There Are Some That You Wish You Never Have To Think About Again. But You Do.

I Never See Why We Should Do Anything Unless It Is Either A Duty Or A Pleasure! Life's Short Enough Without Filling Up Hours Unnecessarily

The Lost Enjoy Forever The Horrible Freedom They Have Demanded.

We All Agree That Forgiveness Is A Beautiful Idea Until We Have To Practice It.

Satan Always Sends Error Into The World In Pairs That Are Opposites. His Great Hope Is That You Will Get So Upset About One Of His Errors, That You'll React Into The Opposite One, And He's Got You.

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

A Creature Revolting Against A Creator Is Revolting Against The Source Of His Own Powers-including Even His Power To Revolt...it Is Like The Scent Of A Flower Trying To Destroy The Flower.

I Wish We Didn't Live In A World Where Buying And Selling Things Seems To Have Become Almost More Important Than Either Producing Or Using Them.

You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best

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

All These Toys Were Never Intended To Possess My Heart. My True Good Is In Another World, And My Only Real Treasure Is Christ.

I Prefer Being Honest To Being 'honest To God.'

The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty May Be Done Or Grace Received.

We All Want Progress, But If You're On The Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing An About-turn And Walking Back To The Right Road; In That Case, The Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is The Most Progressive.

The Calormens Have Dark Faces And Long Beards. They Wear Flowing Robes And Orange-colored Turbans, And They Are A Wise, Wealthy, Courteous, Cruel And Ancient People. They Bowed Most Politely To Caspian And Paid Him Long Compliments All About The Fountains Of Prosperity Irrigating The Gardens Of Prudence And Virtue --and Things Like That-- But Of Course What They Wanted Was The Money They Had Paid.

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.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

That Fierce Imprisonment In The Self Is But The Obverse Of The Self-giving Which Is Absolute Reality.

When You Argue Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

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

But The Great Thing To Remember Is That, Though Our Feelings Come And Go, His Love For Us Does Not. It Is Not Wearied By Our Sins, Or Our Indifference; And, Therefore, It Is Quite Relentless In Its Determination That We Shall Be Cured Of Those Sins, At Whatever Cost To Us, At Whatever Cost To Him.

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

...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

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 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.

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

If You Thirst You May Drink.

A God. The God. One Word Can Make All The Difference In The World.

Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

All Get What They Want; They Do Not Always Like It.

Look For Yourself, And You Will Find In The Long Run Only Hatred, Loneliness, Despair, Rage, Ruin, And Decay. But Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

Liking An Author May Be As Involuntary And Improbable As Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

It's All Love Or Sex These Days. Friendship Is Almost As Quaint And Outdated A Notion As Chastity. Soon Friends Will Be Like The Elves And The Pixies - Fabulous Mythical Creatures From A Distant Past.

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.

A Woman Means By Unselfishness Chiefly Taking Trouble For Others; A Man Means Not Giving Trouble To Others...thus, While The Woman Thinks Of Doing Good Offices And The Man Of Respecting Other People's Rights, Each Sex, Without Any Obvious Unreason, Can And Does Regard The Other As Radically Selfish.

In The Truest Sense, Christian Pilgrims Have The Best Of Both Worlds. We Have Joy Whenever This World Reminds Us Of The Next, And We Take Solace Whenever It Does Not.

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.

When I Have Learned To Love God Better Than My Earthly Dearest, I Shall Love My Earthly Dearest Better Than I Do Now.

We All Appear As Dunces When Feigning An Interest In Things We Care Nothing About.

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

Experience: That Most Brutal Of Teachers. But You Learn, My God Do You Learn.

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

A Man Who Has Been In Another World Does Not Come Back Unchanged. One Can't Put The Difference Into Words. When The Man Is A Friend It May Become Painful: The Old Footing Is Not Easy To Recover.

Giving To The Poor Is An Essential Part Of Christian Morality.

No Man Can Be An Exile If He Remembers That All The World Is One City.

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

If My House Has Collapsed At One Blow, That Is Because It Was A House Of Cards. The Faith Which 'took These Things Into Account' Was Not Faith But Imagination.

When The Time Comes To You At Which You Will Be Forced At Last To Utter The Speech Which Has Lain At The Center Of Your Soul For Years, Which You Have, All That Time, Idiot-like, Been Saying Over And Over, You'll Not Talk About The Joy Of Words. I Saw Well Why The Gods Do Not Speak To Us Openly, Nor Let Us Answer. 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?

What The Soul Cries Out For Is The Resurrection Of The Senses. Even In This Life, Matter Would Be Nothing To Us If It Were Not The Source Of Sensations.

What Do They Teach Them At These Schools?

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.

This Must Be A Simply Enormous Wardrobe!

Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

Lion Witch Wardrobe

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.

If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?

When They Have Really Learned To Love Their Neighbours As Themselves, They Will Be Allowed To Love Themselves As Their Neighbours.

Screwtape Letters

If The Universe Is So Bad...how On Earth Did Human Beings Ever Come To Attribute It To The Activity Of A Wise And Good Creator?

I Do Not Believe One Can Settle How Much We Ought To Give. I Am Afraid The Only Safe Rule Is To Give More Than We Can Spare. In Other Words, If Our Expenditure On Comforts, Luxuries, Amusements, Etc, Is Up To The Standard Common Among Those With The Same Income As Our Own, We Are Probably Giving Away Too Little. If Our Charities Do Not At All Pinch Or Hamper Us, I Should Say They Are Too Small. There Ought To Be Things We Should Like To Do And Cannot Do Because Our Charitable Expenditure Excludes Them.

When I Lay These Questions Before God I Get No Answer. But A Rather Special Sort Of 'no Answer.' It Is Not The Locked Door. It Is More Like A Silent, Certainly Not Uncompassionate, Gaze. As Though He Shook His Head Not In Refusal But Waiving The Question. Like, 'peace, Child; You Don't Understand.

Nothing That You Have Not Given Away Will Ever Be Really Yours.

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".

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

All Their Life In This World And All Their Adventures Had Only Been The Cover And The Title Page: Now At Last They Were Beginning Chapter One Of The Great Story Which No One On Earth Has Read: Which Goes On For Ever: In Which Every Chapter Is Better Than The One Before.

Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills.

The Doors Of Hell Are Locked From The Inside!

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.

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is To Take Any One Impulse Of Your Own Nature And Set It Up As The Thing You Ought To Follow At All Costs.

It Was Not For Societies Or States, That Christ Died, But For Men.

If One Has To Choose Between Reading The New Books And Reading The Old, One Must Choose The Old: Not Because They Are Necessarily Better But Because They Contain Precisely Those Truths Of Which Our Own Age Is Neglectful.

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

If God Thinks This State Of War In The Universe Is A Price Worth Paying For Free Will--that Is, For Making A Live World In Which Creatures Can Do Real Good Or Harm And Something Of Real Importance Of Real Importance Can Happen, Instead Of A Toy World Which Only Moves When He Pulls The Strings--then We May Take It It Is Worth Paying.

You Must Have A Capacity To Receive, Or Even Omnipotence Can't Give.

We Shall Draw Nearer To God, Not By Trying To Avoid The Sufferings Inherent In All Loves, But By Accepting Them And Offering Them To Him; Throwing Away All Defensive Armour. If Our Hearts Need To Be Broken, And If He Chooses This As The Way In Which They Should Break, So Be It.

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

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

No Man Knows How Bad He Is Till He Has Tried Very Hard To Be Good...only Those Who Try To Resist Temptation Know How Strong It Is.

The Man Can Neither Man, Nor Retain, One Moment Of Time; It All Comes To Him By Pure Gift; He Might As Well Regard The Sun And Moon As His Chattels.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World. He Feels That He Is Finding His Place In It, While Really It Is Finding Its Place In Him.

For They (art And Music) 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.

To Be Religious Is To Have One's Attention Fixed On God And On One's Neighbour In Relation To God.

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

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.

Friendship Is Born At That Moment When One Man Says To Another: "what! You Too? I Thought That No One But Myself . . ."

Christianity Tells People To Repent And Promises Them Forgiveness. It Therefore Has Nothing (as Far As I Know) To Say To People Who Do Not Know They Have Done Anything To Repent Of And Who Do Not Feel That They Need Forgiveness.

You Had Nothing To Say About It And Yet Made The Nothing Up Into Words.

All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out Of Date.

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

The Very Idea Of Freedom Presupposes Some Objective Moral Law Which Overarches Rulers And Ruled Alike...unless We Return To The Crude And Nursery-like Belief In Objective Values, We Perish.

It Is Natural For Us To Wish That God Had Designed For Us A Less Glorious And Less Arduous Destiny; But Then We Are Wishing Not For More Love But For Less.

What He Says, Even On His Knees, About His Own Sinfulness Is All Parrot Talk. At Bottom, He Still Believes He Has Run Up A Very Favorable Credit-balance In The Enemy's Ledger By Allowing Himself To Be Converted, And Thinks That He Is Showing Great Humility And Condescension In Going To Church With These 'smug', Commonplace Neighbors At All.

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

The Event Of Falling In Love... In One High Bound It Has Overleaped The Massive Wall Of Our Selfhood; It Has Made Appetite Itself Altruistic, Tossed Personal Happiness Aside As A Triviality And Planted The Interests Of Another In The Centre Of Our Being.

Falling In Love

The More Often He Feels Without Acting, The Less He Will Be Able Ever To Act, And, In The Long Run, The Less He Will Be Able To Feel.

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.

Power To Translate Is The Test Of Having Really Understood One's Own Meaning.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai. The Moral Law May Exist To Be Transcended: But There Is No Transcending It For Those Who Have Not First Admitted Its Claims Up On Them, And Then Tried With All Their Strength To Meet That Claim, And Fairly And Squarely Faced The Fact Of Their Failure.

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.

It May Be Hard For An Egg To Turn Into A Bird: It Would Be A Jolly Sight Harder For It To Learn To Fly While Remaining An Egg. We Are Like Eggs At Present. And You Cannot Go On Indefinitely Being Just An Ordinary, Decent Egg. We Must Be Hatched Or Go Bad.

Much Of The Modern Resistance To Chastity Comes From Men's Belief That They 'own' Their Bodies—those Vast And Perilous Estates, Pulsating With The Energy That Made The Worlds, In Which They Find Themselves Without Their Consent And From Which They Are Ejected At The Pleasure Of Another!

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.

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.

People Talk As If Grief Were Just A Feeling -- As If It Weren't The Continually Renewed Shock Of Setting Out Again And Again On Familiar Roads And Being Brought Up Short By The Grim Frontier Post That Now Blocks Them.

When The Whole World Is Running Towards A Cliff, He Who Is Running In The Opposite Direction Appears To Have Lost His Mind.

When Pain Is To Be Born, A Little Courage Helps More Than Much Knowledge, A Little Human Sympathy More Than Much Courage, And The Least Tincture Of The Love Of God More Than All.

Only He Who Really Lived A Human Life (and I Presume That Only One Did) Can Fully Taste The Horror Of Death.

One Of The Dangers Of Having A Lot Of Money Is That You May Be Quite Satisfied With The Kinds Of Happiness Money Can Give And So Fail To Realize Your Need For God. If Everything Seems To Come Simply By Signing Checks, You May Forget That You Are At Every Moment Totally Dependent On God.

The Modern Idea Of A Great Man Is One Who Stands At The Lonely Extremity Of Some Single Line Of Development--

We Can Ignore Even Pleasure. But Pain Insists Upon Being Attended To. God Whispers To Us In Our Pleasures, Speaks In Our Conscience, But Shouts In Our Pains: It Is His Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World....no Doubt Pain As God's Megaphone Is A Terrible Instrument; It May Lead To Final And Unrepented Rebellion. But It Gives The Only Opportunity The Bad Man Can Have For Amendment. It Removes The Veil; It Plants The Flag Of Truth Within The Fortress Of The Rebel Soul.

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

In Worship, God Imparts Himself To Us.

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

Remember That All Worlds Draw To An End And That Noble Death Is A Treasure Which No One Is Too Poor To Buy.

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

You Would Not Call A Man Humane For Ceasing To Set Mousetraps If He Did So Because He Believed There Were No Mice In The House.

It Is A Dreadful Truth That The State Of Having To Depend Solely On God Is What We All Dread Most.... It Is Good Of Him To Force Us; But Dear Me, How Hard To Feel That It Is Good At The Time.

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.

If Christianity Is Only One More Bit Of Good Advice, Then Christianity Is Of No Importance.

You Must Ask For God's Help. Even When You Have Done So, It May Seem To You For A Long Time That No Help, Or Less Help Than You Need, Is Being Given. Never Mind. After Each Failure, Ask Forgiveness, Pick Yourself Up, And Try Again. Very Often What God First Helps Us Towards Is Not The Virtue Itself But Just This Power Of Always Trying Again.

But What Manner Of Use Would It Be Ploughing Through That Darkness?' Asked Drinian. Use?' Replied Reepicheep. 'use, Captain?' If You Mean By Filling Our Bellies Or Our Purses, I Confess It Will Be No Use At All. So Far As I Know We Did Not Set Sail To Look For Things Useful But To Seek Honour And Adventures. And Here Is As Great An Adventure As I Have Ever Heard Of, And Here, If We Turn Back, No Little Impeachment Of All Our Honours.

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