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Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.
C. S. Lewis
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Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
C. S. Lewis
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God, in the end, gives people what they most want, including freedom from himself. What could be more fair?
C. S. Lewis
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It would be nice and fairly nearly true, to say that 'from that time forth, Eustace was a different boy.' To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.
C. S. Lewis
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It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.
C. S. Lewis
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I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.
C. S. Lewis
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Our struggle is--isn't it?--to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a Listener at all. For as the situation grows more and more desperate, the grisly fears intrude. Are we only talking to ourselves in an empty universe? The silence is often so emphatic. And we have prayed so much already
C. S. Lewis
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In my experience, it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate the people who 'happen to be there.' Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
C. S. Lewis
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It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.
C. S. Lewis
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The happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to him.
C. S. Lewis
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There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he "has read" them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?
C. S. Lewis
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The human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye).
C. S. Lewis
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The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be "like real life" in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region.
C. S. Lewis
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Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.
C. S. Lewis
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When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.
C. S. Lewis
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The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think.
C. S. Lewis
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You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humour while roaring with laughter.
C. S. Lewis
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And that's why, gentleman, if your little girl doesn't come up to scratch, it will be our painful duty to cut all your throats. Merely in a way of business, as you might say, and no offense, I hope.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.
C. S. Lewis
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All these toys were never intended to possess my heart. My true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ.
C. S. Lewis
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All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world; but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.
C. S. Lewis
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You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly; while you are making them you cannot see them. Good people know about both bad and evil; bad people do not know about either.
C. S. Lewis
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The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question 'What if this present were the world's last night?' is equally relevant.
C. S. Lewis
