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The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.
C. S. Lewis
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Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins." "It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did." And he looked very thoughtful.
C. S. Lewis
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When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
C. S. Lewis
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The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.
C. S. Lewis
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I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.
C. S. Lewis
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'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.
C. S. Lewis
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Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?
C. S. Lewis
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The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.
C. S. Lewis
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It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.
C. S. Lewis
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How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?
C. S. Lewis
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The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is oneself. And yet one can't change that either-only ask Our Lord to do so.
C. S. Lewis
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A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.
C. S. Lewis
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We must meet children as equals in that area of our nature where we are their equals...The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.
C. S. Lewis
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I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say 'at last', I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do - so much have I enjoyed it.
C. S. Lewis
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You see, Aslan didn't tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he's up, I shouldn't wonder. But that doesn't let us off following the signs. - The Silver Chair
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden...A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved although it does tell us a good deal about those who hold it.
C. S. Lewis
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Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.
C. S. Lewis
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Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
C. S. Lewis
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I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness; you are not needed there at all. No scope of your talents; only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God. (pg 40)
C. S. Lewis
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What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'
C. S. Lewis
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Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.
C. S. Lewis
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It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.
C. S. Lewis
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In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.
C. S. Lewis
