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You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

-C. S. Lewis

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You Can Be Good

C. S. Lewis

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You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

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The Happiness Which God Designs For His Higher Creatures Is The Happiness Of Being Freely, Voluntarily United To Him And To Each Other In An Ecstasy Of Love And Delight Compared With Which The Most Rapturous Love Between A Man And A Woman On This Earth Is Mere Milk And Water. And For That They Must Be Free.

Believe In God Like You Believe In The Sunrise. Not Because You Can See It, But Because You Can See All It Touches.

The Descent To Hell Is Easy And Those Who Begin By Worshipping Power, Soon Worship Evil.

Prosperity Knits A Man To The World.

Screwtape Letters

We Have Not Long To Live In Any Event. Let Us Spend What Is Left In Seeking The Unpeopled World Behind The Sunrise.

The Point Is That For Our Ancestors, The Universe Was A Picture; For Modern Physics It Is A Story.

One Of The Most Dangerous Errors Is That Civilization Is Automatically Bound To Increase And Spread. The Lesson Of History Is The Opposite; Civilization Is A Rarity, Attained With Difficulty And Easily Lost. The Normal State Of Humanity Is Barbarism, Just As The Normal Surface Of The Planet Is Salt Water. Land Looms Large In Our Imagination And Civilization In History Books, Only Because Sea And Savagery Are To Us Less Interesting.

When You Are Happy, So Happy You Have No Sense Of Needing Him, So Happy That You Are Tempted To Feel His Claims Upon You As An Interruption, If You Remember Yourself And Turn To Him With Gratitude And Praise, You Will Be — Or So It Feels— Welcomed With Open Arms. But Go To Him When Your Need Is Desperate, When All Other Help Is Vain, And What Do You Find? A Door Slammed In Your Face, And A Sound Of Bolting And Double Bolting On The Inside. After That, Silence.

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.

A Pipe Gives A Wise Man Time To Think And A Fool Something To Stick In His Mouth.

It Is Hard To Have Patience With People Who Say 'there Is No Death' Or 'death Doesn't Matter.' There Is Death. And Whatever Is Matters. And Whatever Happens Has Consequences, And It And They Are Irrevocable And Irreversible. You Might As Well Say That Birth Doesn't Matter.

Forgiving And Being Forgiven Are Two Names For The Same Thing. The Important Thing Is That A Discord Has Been Resolved.

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.

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As For Wrinkles--pshaw! Why Shouldn't We Have Wrinkles? Honorable Insignia Of Long Service In This Warfare.

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

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Before We Can Be Cured We Must Want To Be Cured. Those Who Really Wish For Help Will Get It; But For Many Modern People Even The Wish Is Difficult.

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

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No Doubt Those Who Really Founded Modern Science Were Usually Those Whose Love Of Truth Exceeded Their Love Of Power.

Once When I Had Remarked On The Affection Quite Often Found Between Cat And Dog, My Friend Replied, "yes. But I Bet No Dog Would Ever Confess It To The Other Dogs.

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Every Christian Would Agree That A Man's Spiritual Health Is Exactly Proportional To His Love For God.

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

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Christianity, If False, Is Of No Importance, And If True, Of Infinite Importance. The Only Thing It Cannot Be Is Moderately Important.

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.

A Man Is Never So Proud As When Striking An Attitude Of Humility.

A Man Who Has Lived In Many Places Is Not Likely To Be Deceived By The Local Errors Of His Native Village; The Scholar Has Lived In Many Times And Is Therefore In Some Degree Immune From The Great Cataract Of Nonsense That Pours From The Press And The Microphone Of His Own Age.

No Christian And, Indeed, No Historian Could Accept The Epigram Which Defines Religion As 'what A Man Does With His Solitude.'

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

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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.

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

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

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Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself; Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

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

The Enemy Will Not See You Vanish Into God's Company Without An Effort To Reclaim You.

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.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Would Not Be A Great Moral Teacher. He Would Either Be A Lunatic - On A Level With The Man Who Says He Is A Poached Egg - Or Else He Would Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God; Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool; You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us.

You Too? I Thought I Was The Only One.

Funny Best Friend

When He Was A Young Man He Prayed Constantly For Chastity; But Years Later He Realized That While His Lips Had Been Saying 'oh Lord, Make Me Chaste,' His Heart Had Been Secretly Adding, 'but Please Don't Do It Just Yet.

I Wonder If People Who Asked For God To Intervene In Our World, Really Know What They Are Asking. Will They Want To Be There When God Really Does Intervene?

The First Fact In The History Of Christendom Is A Number Of People Who Say They Have Seen The Resurrection.

You Must Therefore Zealously Guard In His Mind The Curious Assumption 'my Time Is My Own'. Let Him Have The Feeling That He Starts Each Day As The Lawful Possessor Of Twenty-four Hours. Let Him Feel As A Grievous Tax That Portion Of This Property Which He Has To Make Over To Him Employers, And As A Generous Donation That Further Portion Which H Allows To Religious Duties. But What He Must Never Be Permitted To Doubt Is That The Total From Which These Deductions Have Been Made Was, In Some Mysterious Sense, His Own Personal Birthright.

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.

We Do Not Want To Merely “see” Beauty. We Want To Be United With It, To Receive It Into Ourselves, To Become Part Of It.

Slowly, Quietly, Like Snow-flakes—like The Small Flakes That Come When It Is Going To Snow All Night —little Flakes Of Me, My Impressions, My Selections, Are Settling Down On The Image Of Her. The Real Shape Wil Be Quite Hidden In The End.

Most Of Us Are Not Really Approaching The Subject In Order To Find Out What Christianity Says; We Are Approaching It In The Hope Of Finding Support From Christianity For The Views Of Our Own Party.

We Are Born Helpless. As Soon As We Are Fully Conscious We Discover Loneliness. We Need Others Physically, Emotionally, And Intellectually. We Need Them If We Are To Know Anything, Even Ourselves.

But Courage, Child: We Are All Between The Paws Of The True Aslan.

We Have Lost The Invaluable Faculty Of Being Shocked A Faculty Which Has Hitherto Almost Distinguished The Man Or Woman From The Beast Or Child.

Provided That Any Of Those Neighbours Sing Out Of Tune Or Have Boots That Squeak, Or Double Chins, Or Odd Clothes, The Patient Will Quite Easily Believe That Their Religion Must Therefore Be Somehow Ridiculous.

When You Invite A Middle-aged Moralist To Address You, I Suppose I Must Conclude That You Have A Taste For Middle-aged Moralizing.

Never Exaggerate. Never Say More Than You Really Mean.

Hitherto The Plans Of The Educationalists Have Achieved Very Little Of What They Attempted, And Indeed We May Well Thank The Beneficent Obstinacy Of Real Mothers, Real Nurses, And (above All) Real Children For Preserving The Human Race In Such Sanity As It Still Possesses.

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.

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.

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.

The Question About Progress Has Become The Question Whether We Can Discover Any Way Of Submitting To The Worldwide Paternalism Of A Technocracy Without Losing All Personal Privacy And Independence. Is There Any Possibility Of Getting The Super Welfare State's Honey And Avoiding The Sting?

Think Of Me As A Fellow Patient In The Same Hospital Who, Having Been Admitted A Little Earlier Could Give Some Advice.

Men Became Scientific Because They Expected Law In Nature, And They Expected Law In Nature Because They Believed In A Law Giver.

Be Confident Small Immortals. You Are Not The Only Voice That All Things Utter, Nor Is There Eternal Silence In The Places Where You Cannot Come.

Love...is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit; Reinforced By (in Christian Marriages) The Grace Which Both Partners Ask, And Receive, From God. They Can Have This Love For Each Other Even At Those Moments When They Do Not Like Each Other; As You Love Yourself Even When You Do Not Like Yourself.

This Is One Of The Miracles Of Love: It Gives A Power Of Seeing Through Its Own Enchantments And Yet Not Being Disenchanted.

To Have Faith In Christ Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice.

I Was Not Born To Be Free---i Was Born To Adore And Obey.

Your Book Bill Ought To Be Your Biggest Extravagance.

Let There Be Wicked Kings And Beheadings, Battles And Dungeons, Giants And Dragons, And Let The Villans Be Soundly Killed At The End Of The Book. I Think It Is Possible That By Confining Your Child To The Blameless Stories Of Life In Which Nothing At All Alarming Ever Happens, You Would Fail To Banish The Terrors, And Would Succeed In Banishing All That Can Ennoble Them Or Make Them Endurable.

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.

What We Want Is Not More Little Books About Christianity, But More Little Books By Christians On Other Subjects--with Their Christianity Latent.

They Were Pretty Tired By Now Of Course; But Not What I’d Call Bitterly Tired – Only Slow And Feeling Very Dreamy And Tired As One Does When One Is Coming To The End Of A Long Day In The Open.

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

The Old Testament Contains Fabulous Elements. The New Testament Consists Mostly Of Teaching, Not Of Narrative At All: But Where It Is Narrative, It Is, In My Opinion, Historical. As To The Fabulous Element In The Old Testament, I Very Much Doubt If You Would Be Wise To Chuck It Out.

And Since We Cannot Deceive The Whole Human Race All The Time, It Is Most Important Thus To Cut Every Generation Off From All Others; For Where Learning Makes A Free Commerce Between The Ages There Is Always The Danger That The Characteristic Errors Of One May Be Corrected By The Characteristic Truths Of Another.

A Children's Story That Can Only Be Enjoyed By Children Is Not A Good Children's Story In The Slightest.

We Reduce Things To Mere Nature In Order That We May "conquer" Them.

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.

You Can Be Good For The Mere Sake Of Goodness; You Cannot Be Bad For The Mere Sake Of Badness. You Can Do A Kind Action When You Are Not Feeling Kind And When It Gives You No Pleasure, Simply Because Kindness Is Right; But No One Ever Did A Cruel Action Simply Because Cruelty Is Wrong - Only Because Cruelty Is Pleasant Or Useful To Him, In Other Words, Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. And There Must Be Something Good First Before It Can Be Spoiled.

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?

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

Friendship Is Unnecessary, Like Philosophy, Like Art... It Has No Survival Value; Rather It Is One Of Those Things That Give Value To Survival.

If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.

Now We Cannot...discover Our Failure To Keep God's Law Except By Trying Our Very Hardest (and Then Failing). Unless We Really Try, Whatever We Say There Will Always Be At The Back Of Our Minds The Idea That If We Try Harder Next Time We Shall Succeed In Being Completely Good. Thus, In One Sense, The Road Back To God Is A Road Of Moral Effort, Of Trying Harder And Harder. But In Another Sense It Is Not Trying That Is Ever Going Tobring Us Home. All This Trying Leads Up To The Vital Moment At Which You Turn To God And Say, "you Must Do This. I Can't.

Read And Re-read--"re-reading, We Always Find A New Book.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Say To God, 'thy Will Be Done,' And Those To Whom God Says, 'all Right, Then, Have It Your Way.'

Thirst Was Made For Water. Inquiry For Truth.

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.

The Longest Way Round Is The Shortest Way Home

Whenever We Find That Our Religious Life Is Making Us Feel That We Are Good - Above All, That We Are Better Than Someone Else - I Think We May Be Sure That We Are Being Acted On, Not By God, But By The Devil.

When We Are Lost In The Woods, The Sight Of A Signpost Is A Great Matter.

Above All Else , The Devil Can Not Stand To Be Mocked.

What You Want Is Practice, Practice, Practice. It Doesn’t Matter What We Write (at Least This Is My View) At Our Age, So Long As We Write Continually As Well As We Can. I Feel That Every Time I Write A Page Either Of Prose Or Of Verse, With Real Effort, Even If It’s Thrown Into The Fire The Next Minute, I Am So Much Further On.

If People Knew How Much Ill-feeling Unselfishness Occasions, It Would Not Be So Often Recommended From The Pulpit.

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.

Joy Is The Serious Business Of Heaven.

When The Author Walks On The Stage The Play Is Over. God Is Going To Invade, All Right...something So Beautiful To Some Of Us And So Terrible To Others That None Of Us Will Have Any Choice Left? For This Time It Will Be God Without Disguise...it Will Be Too Late Then To Choose Your Side. There Is No Use Saying You Choose To Lie Down When It Has Become Impossible To Stand Up.

Regarding The Debate About Faith And Works: It's Like Asking Which Blade In A Pair Of Scissors Is Most Important.

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?

Strictly Speaking, There Are No Such Things As Good And Bad Impulses. Think...of A Piano. It Has Not Got Two Kinds Of Notes On It, The 'right' Notes And The 'wrong' Ones. Every Single Note Is Right At One Time And Wrong At Another. The Moral Law Is Not Any One Instinct Or Set Of Instincts: It Is Something Which Makes A Kind Of Tune (the Tune We Call Goodness Or Right Conduct) By Directing The Instincts.

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.

Every Natural Love Will Rise Again And Live Forever In This Country: But None Will Rise Again Until It Has Been Buried.

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

If You Simply Try To Tell The Truth You Will, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Be Original Without Ever Having Noticed It.

Telling The Truth

The Longer We Stay In Hell, The More We Become Attached To It.

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

A Sum Can Be Put Right: But Only By Going Back Till You Find The Error And Working It Afresh From That Point, Never By Simply Going On.

The Central Miracle Asserted By Christians Is The Incarnation. They Say That God Became Man.

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

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

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

Falling In Love

Whenever You Are Fed Up With Life, Start Writing: Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills, As I Have Found Out Long Ago.

The Most Valuable Thing The Psalms Do For Me Is To Express The Same Delight In God Which Made David Dance.

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

Badness Cannot Succeed Even In Being Bad In The Same Way In Which Goodness Is Good. Goodness Is, So To Speak, Itself: Badness Is Only Spoiled Goodness. Evil Is A Parasite, Not An Original Thing.

I'm Afraid It's Not Much Use To You, Mr. Rumblebuffin.' Not At All. Not At All.' Said The Giant Politely. 'never Met A Nicer Hankerchee.

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.

Before God Closed In On Me, I Was Offered What Now Appears A Moment Of Wholly Free Choice. But I Feel My Decision Was Not So Important. I Was The Object Rather Than The Subject In This Affair.

Life Isn't All Fricasseed Frogs And Eel Pie.

Without Sin, The Universe Is A Solemn Game: And There Is No Good Game Without Rules.

If Christianity Was Something We Were Making Up, Of Course We Could Make It Easier. But It Is Not. We Cannot Compete, In Simplicity With People Who Are Inventing Religions. How Could We? We Are Dealing With Fact. Of Course Anyone Can Be Simple If He Has No Facts To Bother About.

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

The Christian Claim Is: Nothing Explains The Facts Better Than An All-powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent God Creating The Universe And Sending Jesus To Spread His Message. This Is About As Remarkable A Claim As Could Be Stated, And Yet It Is Tossed Out Lightly. Christians Seem To Imagine That "god Did It" Is As Plausible As The Natural Explanation That Stories Grow With The Retelling. The Christian Has The Burden Of Proof, And It's An Enormous Burden Given This Enormous Claim.

And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?

If You Picture Time As A Straight Line Along Which We Have To Travel, Then You Must Think Of God As The Whole Page On Which The Line Is Drawn.

Heaven Will Display Far More Variety Than Hell.

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."

The Great Thing To Remember Is That Though Our Feelings Come And Go God's Love For Us Does Not.

Christian Inspirational

If You Have Once Accepted Christianity, Then Some Of Its Main Doctrines Shall Be Deliberately Held Before Your Mind For Some Time Every Day. That Is Why Daily Prayers And Religious Reading And Churchgoing Are Necessary Parts Of The Christian Life. We Have To Be Continually Reminded Of What We Believe. Neither This Belief Nor Any Other Will Automatically Remain Alive In The Mind. It Must Be Fed.

To Live In A Fully Predictable World Is Not To Be A Man.

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.

Your Patient Has Become Humble; Have You Drawn His Attention To The Fact? All Virtues Are Less Formidable To Us Once The Man Is Aware That He Has Them, But This Is Specially True Of Humility.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai.

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

The Doctrine Of The Second Coming Teaches Us That We Do Not And Cannot Know When The World Drama Will End. The Curtain May Be Rung Down At Any Moment: Say, Before You Have Finished Reading This Paragraph.

If You Read History You Will Find That The Christians Who Did Most For The Present World Were Precisely Those Who Thought Most Of The Next. It Is Since Christians Have Largely Ceased To Think Of The Other World That They Have Become So Ineffective In This.

Christ Did Not Die For Man Because They Were Intrinsically Worth Dying For, But Because He Is Intrinsically Love, And Therefore Loves Infinitely.

If God 'foresaw' Our Acts, It Would Be Very Hard To Understand How We Could Be Free Not To Do Them. But Suppose God Is Outside And Above The Time-line... You Never Supposed That Your Actions At This Moment Were Any Less Free Because God Knows What You Are Doing. Well, He Know Your Tomorrow's Actions In Just The Same Way--because He Is Already In Tomorrow And Can Simply Watch You. In A Sense, He Does Not Know Your Action Till You Have Done It: But The Moment At Which You Have Done It Is Already 'now' For Him.

We Seek An Enlargement Of Our Being. We Want To Be More Than Ourselves . . . We Want To See With Other Eyes, To Imagine With Other Imaginations, To Feel With Other Hearts, As Well As With Our Own . . . We Demand Windows.

All Joy... Emphasizes Our Pilgrim Status; Always Reminds, Beckons, Awakens Desire. Our Best Havings Are Wantings.

No Natural Feelings Are High Or Low, Holy Or Unholy, In Themselves. They Are All Holy When God's Hand Is On The Rein. They All Go Bad When They Set Up On Their Own And Make Themselves Into False Gods.

When Things Go Wrong, You'll Find They Usually Go On Getting Worse For Some Time; But When Things Once Start Going Right They Often Go On Getting Better And Better.

When Things Go Wrong

Wrong Will Be Right, When Aslan Comes In Sight, At The Sound Of His Roar, Sorrows Will Be No More, When He Bares His Teeth, Winter Meets Its Death, And When He Shakes His Mane, We Shall Have Spring Again.

If God Were A Kantian, Who Would Not Have Us Till We Came To Him From The Purest And Best Motives, Who Could Be Saved?

The Continual Looking Forward To The Eternal World Is Not A Form Of Escapism Or Wishful Thinking, But One Of The Things A Christian Is Meant To Do.

God Descends To Re-ascend. He Comes Down; Down From The Heights Of Absolute Being Into Time And Space, Down Into Humanity ... Down To The Very Roots And Sea-bed Of The Nature He Has Created. But He Goes Down To Come Up Again And Bring The Ruined World Up With Him.

Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Get Neither.

Christian Inspirational

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

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 Human Heart Is Not Unchanging (nay, Changes Almost Out Of Recognition In The Twinkling Of An Eye).

Every Poem Can Be Considered In Two Ways--as What The Poet Has To Say, And As A Thing Which He Makes.

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

Hatred Obscures All Distinctions.

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