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d62d1ab
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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.
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C.S. Lewis |
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4f0fdef
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God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.
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C.S. Lewis |
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92200c8
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Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense -- love as distinct from "being in love" -- is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in l..
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C.S. Lewis |
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04cddea
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Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
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inspirational
prophecy
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C.S. Lewis |
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900ed76
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Oh, Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!
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C.S. Lewis |
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36fe18c
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I am [in your world].' 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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C.S. Lewis |
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782371d
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One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.
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C.S. Lewis |
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6f90cb5
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In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.
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world
inspirational
star
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C.S. Lewis |
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4402daa
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Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."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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C.S. Lewis |
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30b063b
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In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of."
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world
star
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C.S. Lewis |
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bf8ff97
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When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. 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 ti..
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C.S. Lewis |
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a79df53
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Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
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reason
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C.S. Lewis |
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3c35ec4
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I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
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C.S. Lewis |
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63761e0
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I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. ...I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowa..
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C.S. Lewis |
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8f9a2db
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Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
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love
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C.S. Lewis |
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f29bfdd
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But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear..
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C.S. Lewis |
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6cd6431
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Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.
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C.S. Lewis |
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e898131
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to ..
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C.S. Lewis |
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8f63b16
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Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.
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elect
narnia
queen
king
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C.S. Lewis |
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bdff7af
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All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.
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C.S. Lewis |
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f33e599
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The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my e..
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christianity
hope
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C.S. Lewis |
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589f6f2
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For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
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present
time
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C.S. Lewis |
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075083b
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To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?
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C.S. Lewis |
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c459e8b
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Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
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C.S. Lewis |
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c2751af
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I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
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beauty
friendship
god
love
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C.S. Lewis |
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b29b6e1
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You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?
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confidence
trust
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C.S. Lewis |
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8a0adef
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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 was ever going to happen again.
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C.S. Lewis |
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b1ea789
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But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.
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slavery
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C.S. Lewis |
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5d9c823
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In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversati..
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C.S. Lewis |
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e365ed4
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Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally fac..
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love
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C.S. Lewis |
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bb7717d
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It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.
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C.S. Lewis |
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1b6647c
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The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.
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friendship
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C.S. Lewis |
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0e0a3b6
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Suspicion often creates what it suspects.
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C.S. Lewis |
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c74e14c
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The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.
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C.S. Lewis |
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7823e66
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No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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df6c875
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God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.
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slackers
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C.S. Lewis |
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bc8556f
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Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." ... It is when two such persons discover one another, when..
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friendship
love
companionship
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C.S. Lewis |
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d4de8f3
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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.
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C.S. Lewis |
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99947b1
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We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
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C.S. Lewis |
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da7a58c
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Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past a..
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C.S. Lewis |
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f924ede
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I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks..
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management
police-state
bureaucracy
efficiency
corporatocracy
corporations
dictatorship
big-business
evil
hell
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C.S. Lewis |
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d8835a2
|
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
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grief
religion
god
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C.S. Lewis |
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78048e6
|
If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.
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C.S. Lewis |
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d0a86fb
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You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.
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C.S. Lewis |