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70f584a
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Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ." --
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C.S. Lewis |
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715ed93
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You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
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reading
books
inspirational
tea
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C.S. Lewis |
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b460ccb
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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become..
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C.S. Lewis |
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b54219e
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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
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friendship
inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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67f9287
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Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He ..
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C.S. Lewis |
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62897a8
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A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
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religion
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C.S. Lewis |
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ccc3c97
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Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.
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cry
crying
decisions
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C.S. Lewis |
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ebb763c
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I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be t..
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jesus
god
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C.S. Lewis |
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9fd8f06
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I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.
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love
safe
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C.S. Lewis |
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dc030e4
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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
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grief
sorrow
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C.S. Lewis |
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332636c
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It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
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C.S. Lewis |
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9e0bf92
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Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say "My tooth is aching" than to say "My heart is broken."
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pain
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C.S. Lewis |
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6c21eba
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Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
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books
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C.S. Lewis |
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edd719d
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Courage, dear heart.
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narnia
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C.S. Lewis |
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5f4f6c7
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What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.
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C.S. Lewis |
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46a1c29
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God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
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religion
inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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33935d5
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It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?" "But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan. "Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund. "I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
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narnia
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C.S. Lewis |
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b8822d6
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To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for y..
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christianity
faith
obedience
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C.S. Lewis |
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cfe8cea
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Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
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C.S. Lewis |
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f1315be
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There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened."
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hell
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C.S. Lewis |
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6c0094e
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We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis; Inspirational Christian Library |
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6ad6666
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She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
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women
zealousness
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C.S. Lewis |
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239cdc0
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There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
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C.S. Lewis |
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96ee51f
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That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never can carry a map in their heads." "That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy."
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C.S. Lewis |
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a2135b0
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My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
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justice
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C.S. Lewis |
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6680fec
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Things never happen the same way twice.
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C.S. Lewis |
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ff0f6ab
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The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.
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god
love
inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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cd8f4c1
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In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, wh..
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friendship
inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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4f603ab
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In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, wh..
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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884b602
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And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
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slavery
human
god
religious
inspirational
c-s-lewis
mere-christianity
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C.S. Lewis |
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2ec6a97
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A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
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temptation
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C.S. Lewis |
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8325dbd
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I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.
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sadness
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C.S. Lewis |
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6fd4cfd
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I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to unders..
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C.S. Lewis |
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fca8b81
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I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!
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heaven
christianity
inspirational
narnia
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C.S. Lewis |
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c8baf30
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You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion."
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C.S. Lewis |
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e539a34
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Give me all of you!!! I don't want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don't want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and drea..
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C.S. Lewis |
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784117c
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If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
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C.S. Lewis |
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8fc18ca
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Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.
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C.S. Lewis |
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222d0fe
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As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.
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humility
pride
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C.S. Lewis |
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ec20756
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Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
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god
beaver
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C.S. Lewis |
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7283a4a
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Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.
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incrementalism
hell
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C.S. Lewis |
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0615554
|
When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass - may pass in the first half hour - into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to Friendship between the lovers. But..
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C.S. Lewis |
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af2e404
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Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.
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C.S. Lewis |
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60357b1
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One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himsel..
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C.S. Lewis |