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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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The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.
C. S. Lewis
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The proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator—to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature. When it does so, it is good and happy.
C. S. Lewis
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Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
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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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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All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only beloved who will never pass away.
C. S. Lewis
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I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.
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
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God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity ... down to the very roots and sea-bed of the nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him.
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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If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. It cuts its own throat.
C. S. Lewis
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Because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world more than those who know no other.
C. S. Lewis
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Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours.
C. S. Lewis
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Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ʿreligionʾ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.
C. S. Lewis
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Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends - comrades - do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed.
C. S. Lewis
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Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.
C. S. Lewis
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A particular ikon an aid to devotion may be itself a word of art, but that is logically accidental; its artistic merits will not make it a better ... ikon. They may make it a worse one.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
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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I wonder if people who asked for God to intervene in our world, really know what they are asking. Will they want to be there when God really does intervene?
C. S. Lewis
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Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.
C. S. Lewis
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We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.
C. S. Lewis
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It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
C. S. Lewis
