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We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.
C. S. Lewis -
In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving.
C. S. Lewis
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That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.
C. S. Lewis -
It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.
C. S. Lewis -
Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.
C. S. Lewis -
If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them.
C. S. Lewis -
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.
C. S. Lewis -
As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation.
C. S. Lewis
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While friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of.
C. S. Lewis -
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.
C. S. Lewis -
Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.
C. S. Lewis -
There was nothing medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.
C. S. Lewis -
The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'
C. S. Lewis -
I think it very wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.
C. S. Lewis
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I would not know how to advise a man how to write. It is a matter of talent and interest. I believe he must be strongly moved if he is to become a writer.
C. S. Lewis -
The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
C. S. Lewis -
We are...a Divine work of art, something that God is making...something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.
C. S. Lewis -
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."
C. S. Lewis -
The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.
C. S. Lewis -
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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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.
C. S. Lewis -
A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women.
C. S. Lewis -
It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
C. S. Lewis -
The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said.
C. S. Lewis