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Mr. Sensible learned only catchwords from them. He could talk like Epicurus of spare diet, but he was a glutton. He had from Montaigne the language of friendship, but no friend.
C. S. Lewis
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I am sorry that my convictions do not allow me to repeat my friend’s offer, said one of the others. But I have had to abandon the humanitarian and egalitarian fancies. His name was Mr. Neo-Classical.
C. S. Lewis
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Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.
C. S. Lewis
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As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.
C. S. Lewis
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Then he tried to recall the lessons of Mr. Wisdom. 'it is I myself, eternal Spirit, who drives this Me, the slave, along that ledge. I ought not to care whether he falls and breaks his neck or not. It is not he that is real, it is I – I – I.
C. S. Lewis
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God is not a static thing...but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
C. S. Lewis
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I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is - what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course...
C. S. Lewis
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The real moon,if you could reach it and survive it, would in a deep and deadly sense be just like anywhere else...no man would find an abiding strangness on the moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden.
C. S. Lewis
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The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
C. S. Lewis
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When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.
C. S. Lewis
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We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.
C. S. Lewis
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'They would say,' he answered, 'that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.'
C. S. Lewis
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Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
C. S. Lewis
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I want to have her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do all over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn't Lazarus the rawer deal?
C. S. Lewis
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There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.
C. S. Lewis
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Solemnity is proper in church, but things that are proper in church are not necessarily proper outside, and vice versa. For example, I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.
C. S. Lewis
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A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
C. S. Lewis
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Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C. S. Lewis
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A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C. S. Lewis
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What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F. Highest Common Factor, and Man's conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.
C. S. Lewis
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One can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity.
C. S. Lewis
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They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?
C. S. Lewis
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This is where men, even the trustiest, fail us. Their heart is never so wholly given to any matter but that some trifle of a meal, or a drink, or a sleep, or a joke, or a girl, may come in between them and it, and then (even if you are a queen) you'll get no more good out of them until they've had their way.
C. S. Lewis
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Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.
C. S. Lewis
