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"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior
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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Certainly, Lu. Whatever you like,' said Peter unexpectedly. This was encouraging, but as Peter instantly rolled round and went to sleep again it wasn't much use.
C. S. Lewis
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If and when a horror turns up you will then be given Grace to help you. I don't think one is usually given it in advance. "Give us our daily bread" (not an annuity for life) applies to spiritual gifts too; the little daily support for the daily trial. Life has to be taken day by day and hour by hour.
C. S. Lewis
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If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.
C. S. Lewis
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The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.
C. S. Lewis
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I could well believe that it is God's intention, since we have refused milder remedies, to compel [Christians] into unity, by persecution even. Satan is without doubt nothing else than a hammer in the hand of a benevolent and severe God.
C. S. Lewis
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For the Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work.
C. S. Lewis
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I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks".
C. S. Lewis
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In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.
C. S. Lewis
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This is the land of Narnia,' said the Faun, 'where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.
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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In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.
C. S. Lewis
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If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be played like an orchestra in which all instruments played the same note.
C. S. Lewis
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If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our Pupils are fit to become our Critics & Rivals
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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When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
C. S. Lewis
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Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
C. S. Lewis
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To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves... The modern world in comparison, ignores it.
C. S. Lewis
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Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.
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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The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...
C. S. Lewis
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Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.
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
