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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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There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.
C. S. Lewis
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But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.
C. S. Lewis
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If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
C. S. Lewis
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One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.
C. S. Lewis
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What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?
C. S. Lewis
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Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.
C. S. Lewis
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We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it was very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undeserved compliment.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.
C. S. Lewis
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The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
C. S. Lewis
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'Ah, Psyche,' I said, 'have I made you so little happy as that?'
C. S. Lewis
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The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.
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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Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head, but don't be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud, one is safe from the worst form of pride.
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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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.
C. S. Lewis
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When once a man is launched on such an adventure as this, he must bid farewell to hopes and fears, otherwise death or deliverance will both come too late to save his honor and his reason. Ho, my beauties!
C. S. Lewis
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He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.
C. S. Lewis
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No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.
C. S. Lewis
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Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.
C. S. Lewis
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I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself till I learn to love God;and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him.
C. S. Lewis
