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It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.
C. S. Lewis
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Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
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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The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?
C. S. Lewis
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Will the others see you too?" asked Lucy. "Certainly not at first," said Aslan. "Later on, it depends." "But they won’t believe me!" said Lucy. "It doesn’t matter.
C. S. Lewis
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Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger". "That is because you are older, little one" answered he. "Not because you are?" "I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".
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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Our prayers for others flow more easily than those for ourselves. This shows we are made to live by charity.
C. S. Lewis
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Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.
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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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?
C. S. Lewis
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If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
C. S. Lewis
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The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
C. S. Lewis
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When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.
C. S. Lewis
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Kids like us don't often have the chance of meeting a great warrior like you. Would you have a little fencing match with me? It would be frightfully decent.
C. S. Lewis
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God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.
C. S. Lewis
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The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so.
C. S. Lewis
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Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.
C. S. Lewis
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And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself.
C. S. Lewis
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Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.
C. S. Lewis
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Something of God... flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.
C. S. Lewis
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There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.
C. S. Lewis
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Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.
C. S. Lewis
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They were really getting quite fond of their strange pet and hoped that Aslan would allow them to keep it. The cleverer ones were quite sure by now that at least some of the noises which came out of his mouth had a meaning. They christened him Brandy because he made that noise so often.
C. S. Lewis
