-
If anyone would like to acquire humility, the first step is to realize one is proud. Nothing can be done before it.
-
A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible.
-
Fancy sleeping on air. I wonder if anyone's done it before. I don't suppose they have. Oh, bother—-Scrubb probably has!
-
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.
-
It is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
-
Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best.
-
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.
-
You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.
-
Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy.
-
A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow "for company." Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.
-
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
-
It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power -- it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
-
Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.
-
My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.
-
Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
-
She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.
-
Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
-
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.
-
We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.
-
You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to 'know of the doctrine'.
-
One is sometimes glad not to be a great theologian; one might easily mistake it for being a good Christian.
-
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.
-
The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to teach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.
-
Daughter, I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall.