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The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.
C. S. Lewis
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Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night —little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.
C. S. Lewis
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One is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.
C. S. Lewis
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Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.
C. S. Lewis
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Nobody who gets enough food and clothing in a world where most are hungry and cold has any business to talk about 'misery.'
C. S. Lewis
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Before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair.
C. S. Lewis
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We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.
C. S. Lewis
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If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
C. S. Lewis
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Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do.
C. S. Lewis
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I felt ashamed." "But of what? Psyche, they hadn't stripped you naked or anything?" "No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal -- of being a mortal." "But how could you help that?" "Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?
C. S. Lewis
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I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries'.
C. S. Lewis
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When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the religion of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes
C. S. Lewis
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[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.
C. S. Lewis
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Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature.
C. S. Lewis
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Safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other.
C. S. Lewis
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And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
C. S. Lewis
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Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.
C. S. Lewis
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We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.
C. S. Lewis
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One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.
C. S. Lewis
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When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].
C. S. Lewis
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And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.
C. S. Lewis
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If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all
C. S. Lewis
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Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together. If the voice within us does not say this it is not the voice of Eros.
C. S. Lewis
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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.
C. S. Lewis
