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e78be80
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It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
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C.S. Lewis |
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5c582c8
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We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
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solitude
friendship
privacy
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C.S. Lewis |
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500fad0
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It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed.
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C.S. Lewis |
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bb657a1
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Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
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rely
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C.S. Lewis |
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100b2fd
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Adventures are never fun while you're having them.
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C.S. Lewis |
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f8cbb8f
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There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
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C.S. Lewis |
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9f218ec
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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. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no..
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C.S. Lewis |
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2971eba
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You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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e3f562b
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You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."
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C.S. Lewis |
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e526351
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Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
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C.S. Lewis |
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129846d
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We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
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mourning
grief
suffering
reality
personal-experience
others
experience
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C.S. Lewis |
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2277a92
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Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things, they say-even their looks-w..
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C.S. Lewis |
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9a54aae
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But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face."
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C.S. Lewis |
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a99f444
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When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
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childishness
maturity
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C.S. Lewis |
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765f957
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You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the..
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literature
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C.S. Lewis |
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a9f4fa7
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But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.
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C.S. Lewis |
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997197f
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Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it.
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trust
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C.S. Lewis |
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c8fcf17
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Do not dare not to dare.
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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1fc72dd
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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kin..
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religion
ordinary-people
neighbor
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C.S. Lewis |
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bd073ea
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When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.
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C.S. Lewis |
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a5e9742
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For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
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god
judas
john
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C.S. Lewis |
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2fe6d8a
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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I wan..
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mourning
loneliness
grief
loss
fear
restlessness
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C.S. Lewis |
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1442cec
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I was with book, as a woman is with child.
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C.S. Lewis |
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5802cc4
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If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
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universe
meaning
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C.S. Lewis |
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42948e4
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We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
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pain
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C.S. Lewis |
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7132f90
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Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.
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C.S. Lewis |
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a2452bb
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He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion."
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lion
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C.S. Lewis |
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d4c049a
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The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
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heart
feeling
deeds
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C.S. Lewis |
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c398606
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You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.
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C.S. Lewis |
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0010565
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And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at la..
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C.S. Lewis |
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0877bc2
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A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
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reading
religion
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C.S. Lewis |
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09b6314
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For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time."
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grief
loss
faith
stillbirth
grieving
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C.S. Lewis |
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ccdfe09
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The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made..
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C.S. Lewis |
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9d00f7d
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Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
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C.S. Lewis |
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b1dd01b
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It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light ..
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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6e0e4f0
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Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
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present
gratitude
future
past
love
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C.S. Lewis |
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2b3a87d
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To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.
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C.S. Lewis |
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94deded
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Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight
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aslan
inspirational
prophecy
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C.S. Lewis |
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ecf00e0
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It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.
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C.S. Lewis |
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e3598b0
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The death of a beloved is an amputation.
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death
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C.S. Lewis |
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c310933
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It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
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C.S. Lewis |
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dfde52f
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Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
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christianity
religion
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C.S. Lewis |
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35adadf
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The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.
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C.S. Lewis |
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dea3583
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Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.
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C.S. Lewis |