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You Will Say These Are Very Small Sins... [but] It Does Not Matter How Small The Sins Are Provided That Their Cumulative Effect Is To Edge The Man Away From The Light And Out Into The Nothing. Murder Is No Better Than Cards If Cards Can Do The Trick. Indeed, The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One--the Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts

-C. S. Lewis

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You Will Say These

C. S. Lewis

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You Will Say These Are Very Small Sins... [but] It Does Not Matter How Small The Sins Are Provided That Their Cumulative Effect Is To Edge The Man Away From The Light And Out Into The Nothing. Murder Is No Better Than Cards If Cards Can Do The Trick. Indeed, The Safest Road To Hell Is The Gradual One--the Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot, Without Sudden Turnings, Without Milestones, Without Signposts

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Though I Do Not Believe That My Desire For Paradise Proves That I Shall Enjoy It, I Think It A Pretty Good Indication That Such A Thing Exists And That Some Men Will.

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?

Love May, Indeed, Love The Beloved When Her Beauty Is Lost: But Not Because It Is Lost. Love May Forgive All Infirmities And Love Still In Spite Of Them: But Love Cannot Cease To Will Their Removal. Love Is More Sensitive Than Hatred Itself To Every Blemish In The Beloved… Of All Powers He Forgives Most, But He Condones Least: He Is Pleased With Little, But Demands All.

There Is A Difficulty About Disagreeing With God. He Is The Source From Which All Your Reasoning Power Comes: You Could Not Be Right And He Wrong Any More Than A Stream Can Rise Higher Than Its Own Source. When You Are Arguing 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.

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.

I Believe In Christianity As I Believe The Sun Has Risen, Not Only Because I See It, But Because By It I See Everything Else.

What Does Seem To Me Poisonous, What Breeds A Type Of Patriotism That Is Pernicious If It Lasts But Not Likely To Last Long In An Educated Adult, Is The Perfectly Serious Indoctrination Of The Young In Knowably False Or Biased History - The Heroic Legend Drably Disguised As Text-book Fact. With This Creeps In The Tacit Assumption That Other Nations Have Not Equally Their Heroes; Perhaps Even The Belief - Surely It Is Very Bad Biology - That We Can Literally 'inherit' Tradition.

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

He Liked Books If They Were Books Of Information And Had Pictures Of Grain Elevators Or Of Fat Foreign Children Doing Exercises In Model Schools.

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.

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

All I Am In Private Life Is A Literary Critic And Historian, That's My Job...and I'm Prepared To Say On That Basis If Anyone Thinks The Gospels Are Either Legends Or Novels, Then That Person Is Simply Showing His Incompetence As A Literary Critic. I've Read A Great Many Novels And I Know A Fair Amount About The Legends That Grew Up Among Early People, And I Know Perfectly Well The Gospels Are Not That Kind Of Stuff.

The Knight Is A Man Of Blood And Iron, A Man Familiar With The Sight Of Smashed Faces And The Ragged Stumps Of Lopped-off Limbs; He Is Also A Demure, Almost A Maidenlike, Guest In Hall, A Gentle, Modest, Unobtrusive Man. He Is Not A Compromise Or Happy Mean Between Ferocity And Meekness; He Is Fierce To The Nth And Meek To The Nth.

In Commanding Us To Glorify Him, God Is Inviting Us To Enjoy Him.

Even If There Were Pains In Heaven, All Who Understand Would Desire Them.

By Repenting, One Acknowledges Them As Sins-therefore Not To Be Repeated.

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

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.

Beloved," Said The Glorious One, "unless Thy Desire Had Been For Me Thou Wouldst Not Have Sought So Long And So Truly. For All Find What They Truly Seek.

Miracles Are For Beginners.

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.

God Became Man To Turn Creatures Into Sons: Not Simply To Produce Better Men Of The Old Kind But To Produce A New Kind Of Man. It Is Not Like Teaching A Horse To Jump Better And Better But Like Turning A Horse Into A Winged Creature.

You Can Put This Another Way By Saying That While In Other Sciences The Instruments You Use Are Things External To Yourself (things Like Microscopes And Telescopes), The Instrument Through Which You See God Is Your Whole Self. And If A Man's Self Is Not Kept Clean And Bright, His Glimpse Of God Will Be Blurred - Like The Moon Seen Through A Dirty Telescope. That Is Why Horrible Nations Have Horrible Religions: They Have Been Looking At God Through A Dirty Lens.

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.

Many A Man, Brought Up In The Glib Profession Of Some Shallow Form Of Christianity, Who Comes Through Reading Astronomy To Realize For The First Time How Majestically Indifferent Most Reality Is To Man, And Who Perhaps Abandons His Religion On That Account, May At That Moment Be Having His First Genuinely Religious Experience.

In Reading Chesterton, As In Reading Macdonald, I Did Not Know What I Was Letting Myself In For. A Young Man Who Wishes To Remain A Sound Atheist Cannot Be Too Careful Of His Reading. There Are Traps Everywhere — "bibles Laid Open, Millions Of Surprises," As Herbert Says, "fine Nets And Stratagems." God Is, If I May Say It, Very Unscrupulous.

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 Basic Proposal Of The New Education Is To Be That Dunces And Idlers Must Not Be Made To Feel Inferior To Intelligent And Industrious Pupils. That Would Be 'undemocratic.

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

If Naturalism Were True Then All Thoughts Whatever Would Be Wholly The Result Of Irrational Causes. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Joy Bursts In Our Lives When We Go About Doing The Good At Hand And Not Trying To Manipulate Things And Times To Achieve Joy.

A Dragon Has Just Flown Over The Tree-tops And Lighted On The Beach. Yes, I Am Afraid It Is Between Us And The Ship. And Arrows Are No Use Against Dragons. And They're Not At All Afraid Of Fire." "with Your Majesty's Leave-" Began Reepicheep. "no, Reepicheep," Said The King Very Firmly, "you Are Not To Attempt A Single Combat With It.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

Much Is Expected From Those To Whom Much Is Given.

Philanthropy Giving

And In That Far Distant Day When The Gods Become Wholly Beautiful, Or We At Last Are Shown How Beautiful They Always Were, This Will Happen More And More. For Mortals, As You Said, Will Become More And More Jealous. And Mother And Wife And Child And Friend Will All Be In League To Keep A Soul From Being United With The Divine Nature.

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

Christian Friends

Either The Day Must Come When Joy Prevails And All The Makers Of Misery Are No Longer Able To Infect It, Or Else, For Ever And Ever, The Makers Of Misery Can Destroy In Others The Happiness They Reject For Themselves.

You Have Gone Into The Temple...and Found Him, As Always, There.

Can A Mortal Ask Questions Which God Finds Unanswerable? Quite Easily, I Should Think. All Nonsense Questions Are Unanswerable.

[the Decay Of Logic Results From An] Untroubled Assumption That The Particular Is Real And The Universal Is Not.

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.

This Is Our Dilemma--either To Taste And Not To Know Or To Know And Not To Taste--or, More Strictly, To Lack One Kind Of Knowledge Because We Are In An Experience Or To Lack Another Kind Because We Are Outside It. [. . .] Of This Tragic Dilemma Myth Is The Partial Solution. In The Enjoyment Of A Great Myth We Come Nearest To Experiencing As A Concrete What Can Otherwise Be Understood Only As An Abstraction.

Gratitude Exclaims, Very Properly, 'how Good Of God To Give Me This.'

Truth And Falsehood Are Opposed; But Truth Is The Norm Not Of Truth Only But Of Falsehood Also.

Truth And Falsehood

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.

Time Is The Very Lens Through Which Ye See - Small And Clear, As Men See Through The Wrong End Of A Telescope - Something That Would Otherwise Be Too Big For Ye To See At All. That Thing Is Freedom: The Gift Whereby Ye Most Resemble Your Maker And Are Yourselves Parts Of Eternal Reality.

It Is By Human Avarice Or Human Stupidity, Not By The Churlishness Of Nature, That We Have Poverty And Overwork.

As Long As He Doesn't Convert It Into Action, It Does Not Matter How Much A Man Thinks About His Repentance.

In Order That We Finite Beings May Apprehend The Emporer He Translates His Glory Into Multiple Forms - Into Stars, Woods, Waters, Beasts, And The Bodies Of Men.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.

All Right, Beautiful. You've Got Me Tied Down To This Stone Table, And There's A Knife In Your Hand That Says You Get To Rule Narnia For Another Hundred Years. So Maybe I Die, And Winter Goes On. Maybe The Hunger And The Darkness And The Fear Never End. But As Long As The Children Believe In Me, I Know That Aslan Will Live Again. I, The Great Lion, Son Of The Emperor Over The Sea, Will Live Again And -- Aaaaauugh!!

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

The Thing Is To Rely On God. The Time Will Come When You Will Regard All This Misery As A Small Price To Pay For Having Been Brought To That Dependence. Meanwhile, The Trouble Is That Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Has Yet Been Done.

There Is Only One Way Fit For A Man - Heroism, Or Master-morality, Or Violence. All The Other People In Between Are Ploughing The Sand.

If A Thing Is Free To Be Good It Is Also Free To Be Bad. And Free Will Is What Has Made Evil Possible. Why, Then, Did God Give Them Free Will? Because Free Will, Though It Makes Evil Possible, Is Also The Only Thing That Makes Possible Any Love Or Goodness Or Joy Worth Having.

This Is My Password," Said The King As He Drew His Sword. "the Light Is Dawning, The Lie Broken. Now Guard Thee, Miscreant, For I Am Tirian Of Narnia.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You ‘love’ Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did. As Soon As We Do This We Find One Of The Great Secrets. When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him.

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

In The Midst Of A World Of Light And Love, Of Song And Feast And Dance, [lucifer] Could Find Nothing To Think Of More Interesting Than His Own Prestige.

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

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

Thus The Criminal Ceases To Be A Person, A Subject Of Rights And Duties, And Becomes Merely An Object On Which Society Can Work. And This Is, In Principle, How Hitler Treated The Jews. They Were Objects; Killed Not For Ill Desert But Because, On His Theories, They Were A Disease In Society. If Society Can Mend, Remake, And Unmake Men At Its Pleasure, Its Pleasure May, Of Course, Be Humane Or Homicidal. The Difference Is Important. But, Either Way, Rulers Have Become Owners.

We Must Get Over Wanting To Be Needed-this Is The Hardest Of All Temptations To Resist

And A Charge Of Lying Against Someone Whom You Have Always Found Truthful Is A Very Serious Thing; A Very Serious Thing Indeed.

Those Who Tread 'adult' As A Term Of Approval Cannot Hope To Be Considered Adult Themselves. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Along With The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

Not That I Am (i Think) In Much Danger Of Ceasing To Believe In God. The Real Danger Is Of Coming To Believe Such Dreadful Things About Him. The Conclusion I Dread Is Not 'so There's No God After All,' But 'so This Is What God's Really Like. Deceive Yourself No Longer.

Kids Like Us Don't Often Have The Chance Of Meeting A Great Warrior Like You. Would You Have A Little Fencing Match With Me? It Would Be Frightfully Decent.

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

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

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death.

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

Friends Are Like Coals In A Fire - Together, They Glow; Apart, They Grow Cold.

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

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

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

Repentance Is Not Something God Demands Of You Before He Will Take You Back And Which He Could Let You Off If He Chose; It Is Simply A Description Of What Going Back Is Like.

The Harder You Tried Not To Think, The More You Thought.

Vanity Is Really The Least Bad And Most Pardonable Sort. The Vain Person Wants Praise, Applause, Admiration Too Much And Is Always Angling For It. It Is A Fault, But A Childlike And Even (in An Odd Way) A Humble Fault. It Shows That You Are Not Yet Completely Contented With Your Own Admiration. You Value Other People Enough To Want Them To Look At You. You Are In Fact Still Human.

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

At A Well In A Yard They Met A Man Who Was Beating A Boy. The Stick Burst Into A Flower In The Mans Hand. He Tried To Drop It, But It Stuck To His Hand. His Arm Became A Branch, His Body The Trunk Of A Tree, His Feet Took Root.

The Demand Of The Loveless And The Self-imprisoned That They Should Be Allowed To Blackmail The Universe: That Till They Consent To Be Happy (on Their Own Terms) No One Else Shall Taste Joy: That Theirs Should Be The Final Power; That Hell Should Be Able To Veto Heaven.

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

We Are Finite And God Will Not Call Us Everywhere Or To Support Every Worthy Cause. And Real Needs Are Not Far From Us.

Humour Is...the All-consoling And...the All-excusing, Grace Of Life.

Dyson And Tolkien Were The Immediate Human Causes Of My Conversion. Is Any Pleasure On Earth As Great As A Circle Of Christian Friends By A Good Fire?

[m]an Has Been Accustomed, Ever Since He Was A Boy, To Having A Dozen Incompatible Philosophies Dancing About Together Inside His Head. He Doesn't Think Of Doctrines As Primarily "true" Or "false," But As "academic" Or "practical," "outworn" Or "contemporary," "conventional" Or "ruthless." Jargon, Not Argument, Is Your Best Ally In Keeping Him From The Church. Don't Waste Time Trying To Make Him Think That Materialism Is True! Make Him Think It Is Strong Or Stark Or Courageous—that It Is The Philosophy Of The Future. That's The Sort Of Thing He Cares About.

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

Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day As If Nothing Had Yet Been Done.

When You Come To Knowing God, The Initiative Lies On His Side. If He Does Not Show Himself, Nothing You Can Do Will Enable You To Find Him. And, In Fact, He Shows Much More Of Himself To Some People Than To Others—not Because He Has Favourites, But Because It Is Impossible For Him To Show Himself To A Man Whose Whole Mind And Character Are In The Wrong Condition. Just As Sunlight, Though It Has No Favourites, Cannot Be Reflected In A Dusty Mirror As Clearly As In A Clean One.

You Can't Lay Down Any Pattern For God. There Are Many Different Ways Of Bringing People Into His Kingdom, Even Some Ways That I Specially Dislike! I Have Therefore Learned To Be Cautious In My Judgment.

The Most Dangerous Ideas In A Society Are Not The Ones Being Argued, But The Ones That Are Assumed.

Dangerous Ideas

A Moderately Bad Man Knows He Is Not Very Good: A Thoroughly Bad Man Thinks He Is Alright. This Is Common Sense Really. You Understand Sleep When You Are Awake, Not Well You Are Sleeping.

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

Why Must Holy Places Be Dark Places?

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

The Perfect Church Service Would Be One We Were Almost Unaware Of. Our Attention Would Have Been On God.

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

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.

I Enjoyed My Breakfast This Morning, And I Think That Was A Good Thing And Do Not Think It Was Condemned By God. But I Do Not Think Myself A Good Man For Enjoying It.

They Say, 'the Coward Dies Many Times'; So Does The Beloved. Didn't The Eagle Find A Fresh Liver To Tear In Prometheus Every Time It Dined?

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

Homemaking Is Surely In Reality The Most Important Work In The World.

It Is In The Process Of Being Worshipped That God Communicates His Presence To Men.

There Is Something Which Unites Magic And Applied Science (technology) While Separating Them From The "wisdom" Of Earlier Ages. For The Wise Men Of Old, The Cardinal Problem Of Human Life Was How To Conform The Soul To Objective Reality, And The Solution Was Wisdom, Self-discipline , And Virtue. For The Modern, The Cardinal Problem Is How To Conform Reality To The Wishes Of Man, And The Solution Is A Technique.

When You Are Not Feeling Particularly Friendly But Know You Ought To Be, The Best Thing You Can Do, Very Often, Is To Put On A Friendly Manner And Behave As If You Were A Nicer Person Than You Actually Are. And In A Few Minutes, As We Have All Noticed, You Will Be Really Feeling Friendlier Than You Were.

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Of Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You. It Is Easy To Say You Believe A Rope To Be Strong And Sound As Long As You Are Merely Using It To Cord A Box. But Suppose You Had To Hang By That Rope Over A Precipice. Wouldn't You Then First Discover How Much You Really Trusted It?

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

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

Christianity Does Not Want Us To Reduce By One Atom The Hatred We Feel For Cruelty And Treachery. We Ought To Hate Them. Not One Word Of What We Have Said About Them Needs To Be Unsaid. But It Does Want Us To Hate Them In The Same Way In Which We Hate Things In Ourselves: Being Sorry That The Man Should Have Done Such Things, And Hoping, If It Is Anyway Possible, That Somehow, Sometime, Somewhere He Can Be Cured And Made Human Again.

Poetry Most Often Communicates Emotions, Not Directly, But By Creating Imaginatively The Grounds For Those Emotions. It Therefore Communicates Something More Than The Emotion; Only By Means Of That Something More Does It Communicate The Emotion At All.

I Am Only Trying To Call Attention To A Fact; The Fact That This Year, Of This Month, Or, More Likely, This Very Day, We Have Failed To Practice Ourselves The Kind Of Behaviour We Expect From Other People.

Our Problem With Desire Is That We Want Too Little.

Child, That Is Why All The Rest Are Now A Horror To Her. That Is What Happens To Those Who Pluck And Eat Fruits At The Wrong Time And In The Wrong Way. Oh, The Fruit Is Good, But They Loath It Ever After.

And She Never Could Remember; And Ever Since That Day What Lucy Means By A Good Story Is A Story Which Reminds Her Of The Forgotten Story In The Magician's Book.

Even When I Feared And Detested Christianity, I Was Struck By Its Essential Unity, Which, In Spite Of Its Divisions, It Has Never Lost. I Trembled On Recognizing The Same Unmistakable Aroma Coming From The Writings Of Dante And Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas And William Law.

My Idea Of God Is Not A Divine Idea. It Has To Be Shattered Time After Time. He Shatters It Himself.

Do You Mean To Say," Asked Caspian, "that You Three Come From A Round World (round Like A Ball) And You've Never Told Me! It's Really Too Bad For You. Because We Have Fairy-tales In Which There Are Round Worlds And I Have Always Loved Them … Have You Ever Been To The Parts Where People Walk About Upside-down?" Edmund Shook His Head. "and It Isn't Like That," He Added. "there's Nothing Particularly Exciting About A Round World When You're There.

And That Is Enough To Raise Your Thoughts To What May Happen When The Redeemed Soul, Beyond All Hope And Nearly Beyond Belief, Learns At Last That She Has Pleased Him Whom She Was Created To Please. There Will Be No Room For Vanity Then. She Will Be Free From The Miserable Illusion That It Is Her Doing. With No Taint Of What We Should Now Call Self-approval She Will Most Innocently Rejoice In The Thing That God Has Made Her To Be, And The Moment Which Heals Her Old Inferiority Complex Forever Will Also Drown Her Pride… Perfect Humility Dispenses With Modesty.

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

Enemy-occupied Territory - That Is What This World Is.

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.

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

To Forgive The Incessant Provocations Of Daily Life - To Keep On Forgiving The Bossy Mother-in-law, The Bullying Husband, The Nagging Wife, The Selfish Daughter, The Deceitful Son - How Can We Do It? Only, I Think, By Remembering Where We Stand, By Meaning Our Words When We Say In Our Prayers Each Night, “forgive Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us.” We Are Offered Forgiveness On No Other Terms. To Refuse It Is To Refuse God’s Mercy For Ourselves. There Is No Hint Of Exceptions And God Means What He Says.

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

But The Most Obvious Fact About Praise — Whether Of God Or Anything — Strangely Escaped Me. I Thought Of It In Terms Of Compliment, Approval, Or The Giving Of Honor. I Had Never Noticed That All Enjoyment Spontaneously Overflows Into Praise Unless (sometimes Even If) Shyness Or The Fear Of Boring Others Is Deliberately Brought In To Check It.

If You Asked Twenty Good Men To-day What They Thought The Highest Of The Virtues, Nineteen Of Them Would Reply, Unselfishness. But If You Asked Almost Any Of The Great Christians Of Old He Would Have Replied, Love - You See What Has Happened? A Negative Term Has Been Substituted For A Positive, And This Is Of More Than Philological Importance. The Negative Ideal Of Unselfishness Carries With It The Suggestion Not Primarily Of Securing Good Things For Others, But Of Going Without Them Ourselves, As If Our Abstinence And Not Their Happiness Was The Important Point.

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

My Own View Is That The Churches Should Frankly Recognise That The Majority Of The British People Are Not Christians And, Therefore, Cannot Be Expected To Live Christian Lives. There Ought To Be Two Distinct Kinds Of Marriage: One Governed By The State With Rules Enforced On All Citizens, The Other Governed By The Church With Rules Enforced By Her On Her Own Members." --about The Only Statement I Agree With In This Book

Our Merriment Must Be Of That Kind (and It Is, In Fact, The Merriest Kind) Which Exists Between People Who Have, From The Outset, Taken Each Other Seriously - No Flippancy, No Superiority, No Presumption. And Our Charity Must Be A Real And Costly Love, With Deep Feeling For The Sins In Spite Of Which We Love The Sinner - No Mere Tolerance Or Indulgence Which Parodies Love As Flippancy Parodies Merriment.

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.

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.

It Is A Poor Thing To Strike Our Colors To God When The Ship Is Going Down Under Us; A Poor Thing To Come To Him As A Last Resort, To Offer Up 'our Own' When It Is No Longer Worth Keeping. If God Were Proud He Would Hardly Have Us On Such Terms: But He Is Not Proud, He Stoops To Conquer, He Will Have Us Even Though We Have Shown That We Prefer Everything Else To Him.

I Sometimes Pray Not For Self-knowledge In General But For Just So Much Self Knowledge At The Moment As I Can Bear And Use At The Moment; The Little Daily Dose.

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

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.

Reality The Iconoclast Once More. Heaven Will Solve Our Problems, But Not, I Think, By Showing Us Subtle Reconciliations Between All Our Apparently Contradictory Notions. The Notions Will All Be Knocked From Under Our Feet. We Shall See That There Never Was Any Problem.

Die Before You Die, There Is No Chance After.

A Christian Is Not Someone Who Never Goes Wrong, But One Who Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Again, Because The Christ-life Is Inside Him.

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.

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

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

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

Once You Were A Child. Once You Knew What Inquiry Was For. There Was A Time When You Asked Questions Because You Wanted Answers, And Were Glad When You Had Found Them. Become A Child Again, Even Now... You Have Gone Wrong. Thirst Was Made For Water; Inquiry For Truth.

Because God Created The Natural - Invented It Out Of His Love And Artistry - It Demands Our Reverence.

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

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

Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.

Once You Become Aware That The Main Business That You Are Here For Is To Know God, Most Of Life's Problems Fall Into Place Of Their Own Accord. J.i. Packer Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Will Get Neither.

We Were Promised Sufferings. They Were Part Of The Program. We Were Even Told, Blessed Are They That Morn.

Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.

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

The Sin Both Of Men And Of Angels, Was Rendered Possible By The Fact That God Gave Us Free Will.

For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex

If We Will Not Learn To Eat The Only Food That The Universe Grows...then We Must Starve Eternally.

In Worship, God Imparts Himself To Us.

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

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.

If Conversion Makes No Improvements In A Man's Outward Actions Then I Think His 'conversion' Was Largely Imaginary.

People Who Bore One Another Should Meet Seldom; People Who Interest One Another, Often.

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

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable.

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

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

Do Not By Any Means Destroy Yourself, For If You Live You May Yet Have Good Fortune, But All The Dead Are Dead Like.

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

Self Improvement

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.

We Cannot Fully Understand The Relations Of Time And Choice Until We Are Beyond Both.

Nature Never Taught Me That There Exists A God Of Glory And Of Infinite Majesty. I Had To Learn That In Other Ways. But Nature Gave The Word Glory A Meaning For Me. I Still Do Not Know Where Else I Could Have Found One.

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

If I Had Really Cared As I Thought I Did About The Sorrows Of The World I Should Not Have Been So Overwhelmed When My Own Sorrow Came- I Thought I Trusted The Rope Until It Mattered To Me Whether It Would Bear Me, Now It Matters And I Find I Didn't.

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

Unless Thought Is Valid We Have No Reason To Believe In The Real Universe.

The Return From The Walk, And The Arrival Of Tea, Should Be Exactly Coincident, And Not Later Than A Quarter Past Four.

The Monstrosity Of Sexual Intercourse Outside Marriage Is That Those Who Indulge In It Are Trying To Isolate One Kind Of Union (the Sexual) From All The Other Kinds Of Union Which Were Intended To Go Along With It And Make Up The Total Union.

Prayer Does Not Change God; It Changes Me.

His Face Had Become Very Red And His Mouth And Fingers Were Sticky. He Did Not Look Either Clever Or Handsome, Whatever The Queen Might Say.

I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

Would It Not Be Better To Be Dead Than To Have This Horrible Fear That Aslan Has Come And Is Not Like The Aslan We Have Believed In And Longed For? It Is As If The Sun Rose One Day And Were A Black Sun.

Most People, If They Had Really Learned To Look Into Their Own Hearts, Would Know That They Do Want, And Want Acutely, Something That Cannot Be Had In This World. There Are All Sorts Of Things In This World That Offer To Give It To You, But They Never Quite Keep Their Promise.

No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers

I Suggest To You That It Is Because God Loves Us That He Gives Us The Gift Of Suffering. Pain Is God's Megaphone To Rouse A Deaf World. You See, We Are Like Blocks Of Stone Out Of Which The Sculptor Carves The Forms Of Men. The Blows Of His Chisel, Which Hurt Us So Much Are What Make Us Perfect.

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

To Love At All Is To Be Vulnerable. Love Anything And Your Heart Will Be Wrung.

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

Pain And Pleasure

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

We Have Not, In Fact, Proved That Science Excludes Miracles: We Have Only Proved That The Question Of Miracles, Like Innumerable Other Questions, Excludes Laboratory Treatment.

You Can Do More With A Castle In A Story Than With The Best Cardboard Castle That Ever Stood On A Nursery Table.

You Can't See Anything Properly While Your Eyes Are Blurred With Tears.

Lucy Woke Out Of The Deepest Sleep You Can Imagine, With The Feeling That The Voice She Liked Best In The World Had Been Calling Her Name.

I Have Come Home At Last! This Is My Real Country! I Belong Here. This Is The Land I Have Been Looking For All My Life, Though I Never Knew It Till Now... Come Further Up, Come Further In!

When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.

Whenever All Men Are...hastening To Be Slaves Or Tyrants We Make Liberalism The Prime Bogey.

Screwtape Letters

The People Who Keep Asking If They Can't Lead A Decent Life Without Christ, Don't Know What Life Is About; If They Did They Would Know That 'a Decent Life' Is Mere Machinery Compared With The Thing We Men Are Really Made For.

If One Could Run Without Getting Tired I Don't Think One Would Often Want To Do Anything Else.

Am I Lost Or Just Less Found?

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

Do Not Let Us Mistake Necessary Evils For Good.

No Good Work Is Done Anywhere Without Aid From The Father Of Lights.

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