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7d37ed3
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If God 'foresaw' our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose god is outside and above the Time-line... You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He know your tomorrow's actions in just the same way--because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done i..
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C.S. Lewis |
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c672aad
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In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
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love
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C.S. Lewis |
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89c6c72
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In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
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observation
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C.S. Lewis |
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e0cf19f
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There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.
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truth
view
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C.S. Lewis |
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93def86
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Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.
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paganism
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C.S. Lewis |
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7b5a843
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Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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1b7f1e7
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Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
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C.S. Lewis |
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1478a6c
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The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.
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C.S. Lewis |
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ccf5a2a
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You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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5ab08c6
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God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. 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. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a h..
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C.S. Lewis |
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c0ec339
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Hell is a state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.
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C.S. Lewis |
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3b22f02
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Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.
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C.S. Lewis |
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af9074f
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In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out." - Mere Christianity"
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mere-christianity
theology
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C.S. Lewis |
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86ed420
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The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our n..
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god
love
selflessness
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C.S. Lewis |
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3b9b787
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This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.
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C.S. Lewis |
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ad78436
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Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?
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C.S. Lewis |
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68f4d91
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Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.
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C.S. Lewis |
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e21a36c
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Are the gods not just?" "Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?"
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C.S. Lewis |
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2bf74f3
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If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
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eugenics
animal-rights
logic
enemies
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C.S. Lewis |
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4578556
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Aslan's instructions always work; there are no exceptions.
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C.S. Lewis |
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4475e69
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It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass...
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C.S. Lewis |
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4985e17
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It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
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C.S. Lewis |
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4a5da26
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Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
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C.S. Lewis |
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80ee8ce
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All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
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C.S. Lewis |
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b284813
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The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.
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christianity
inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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3c01942
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The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good."
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inspirational
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C.S. Lewis |
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a4915a7
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In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; wh..
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C.S. Lewis |
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ec7dcc5
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It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
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C.S. Lewis |
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a3912fe
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Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than other people in that respect.
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C.S. Lewis |
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3d6120a
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She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.
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C.S. Lewis |
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fc204e2
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And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.
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magic
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C.S. Lewis |
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753548e
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Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved... Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.
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C.S. Lewis |
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f51ba58
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Well, sir, if things are real, they're there all the time." "Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say."
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C.S. Lewis |
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b68423f
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Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see.
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C.S. Lewis |
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aae5e33
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if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.
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C.S. Lewis |
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ff9973c
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A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.
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men
women
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C.S. Lewis |
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e8d20b6
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God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back an..
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god
love
cross
christ
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C.S. Lewis |
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0074f7b
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The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has not beauty but what the..
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marriage
love
wife
church
husband
eros
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C.S. Lewis |
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00124e2
|
You can't go on "seeing through" things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To "see through" all things is the same as not to see."
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C.S. Lewis |
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30f3dfb
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And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
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loneliness
heaven
joy
hell
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C.S. Lewis |
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f67db1c
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The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the centre - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake...what Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they 'could be like Gods' - could set up on their own as if they had ..
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human-nature
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C.S. Lewis |
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c0b34f9
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A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all--and more amusing.
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C.S. Lewis |
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67c2bb2
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The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes..
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friendship
love
truth
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C.S. Lewis |
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7bf6e43
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The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
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C.S. Lewis |