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The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
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Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.
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There is one bit of advice given us by the ancient Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest; and lending money at interest - what we call investment - is the basis of our whole system.
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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.
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And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.
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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.
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Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best.
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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.
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Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
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Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.
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I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them.... I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.
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When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
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The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.
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The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.
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The man can neither man, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.
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It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.
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[The witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.
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Good and evil increase at compound interest. That's why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance.
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I'd sooner live among people who don't cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards.
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Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.
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Man, even now, can do wonders to animals: my cat and dog live together in my house and seem to like it. It may have been one of man's functions to restore peace to the animal world, and if he had not joined the enemy he might have succeeded in doing so to an extent now hardly imaginable.
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Remember He is the artist and you are the picture. You can’t see it, you can't see your true self. So quietly submit to be painted.
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Did I hate him, then? Indeed, I believe so. A love like that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love.
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If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.