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That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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The wraith of Sigmund said. 'You know what this is, I suppose. Religious melancholia. Stop while there is time. If you dive, you dive into insanity.'
C. S. Lewis
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The longest way round is the shortest way home. (Quoting Alexander MacLaren, The Wearied Christ and Other Sermons)
C. S. Lewis
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I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
C. S. Lewis
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Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ' God can'.
C. S. Lewis
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I daren't come and drink," said Jill. Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer."I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." There is no other stream," said the Lion.
C. S. Lewis
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One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up.
C. S. Lewis
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The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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I cannot understand how a man can appear in print claiming to disbelieve everything that he presupposes when he puts on the surplice. I feel it is a form of prostitution.
C. S. Lewis
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If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.
C. S. Lewis
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Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.
C. S. Lewis
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There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
C. S. Lewis
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The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.
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.
C. S. Lewis
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Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author's control.
C. S. Lewis
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To be in love involves the most irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness.
C. S. Lewis
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He came in sight of a pass guarded by armed men. ‘you cannot pass … Do you not know that all this country belongs to the Spirit of the Age? … Here Enlightenment, take this fugitive to our Master.’
C. S. Lewis
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There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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If you find that the reader of popular romances--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry.
C. S. Lewis
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Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
C. S. Lewis
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When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.
C. S. Lewis
