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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.
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Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, "Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs.
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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.
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Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
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Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?
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All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.
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By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?
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The whole journey was odd and dream-like -- the roaring stream, the wet grey grass, the glimmering cliffs which they were approaching, and always the glorious, silently pacing beast ahead.
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But if we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, 'Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events.
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For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.
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In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road.
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In order that we finite beings may apprehend the Emporer He translates His glory into multiple forms - into stars, woods, waters, beasts, and the bodies of men.
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Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.
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The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
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There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.
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And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
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Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.
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A powerful dragon crying its eyes out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined.
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As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.
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The event of falling in love... in one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being.
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Well!' said Puddleglum, rubbing his hands. 'This is just what I needed. If these chaps don't teach me to take a serious view of life, I don't know what will.
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I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.
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And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature.
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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