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In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.
C. S. Lewis
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I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.
C. S. Lewis
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I enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
C. S. Lewis
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I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.
C. S. Lewis
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If conversion makes no improvements in a man's outward actions then I think his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.
C. S. Lewis
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Most people spend most of their lives doing neither what they want to be doing nor what they ought to be doing.
C. S. Lewis
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What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.
C. S. Lewis
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Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.
C. S. Lewis
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And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.
C. S. Lewis
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Men propound mathematical theorems in besieged cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on the scaffold, discuss a new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.
C. S. Lewis
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Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.
C. S. Lewis
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To be ignorant and simple now-not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground-would be to throw down our weapons and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
C. S. Lewis
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I mean, the more a man was in the Devil's power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he's drunk.
C. S. Lewis
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Of course, we are to pray for spiritual awakening, and in various ways we can do something toward it. But we must remember that neither Paul nor Apollos gives the increase.
C. S. Lewis
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A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process
C. S. Lewis
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Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.
C. S. Lewis
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God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.
C. S. Lewis
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The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.
C. S. Lewis
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Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.
C. S. Lewis
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Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.
C. S. Lewis
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The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.
C. S. Lewis
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Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.
C. S. Lewis
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The Glory of God, and, as our only means of glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life.
C. S. Lewis
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Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.
C. S. Lewis
