“It is always the novice who exaggerates.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.”
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C.S. Lewis
“While friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of.”
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C.S. Lewis
“If they won't write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves.”
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C.S. Lewis
“One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.”
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C.S. Lewis
“The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.”
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C.S. Lewis
“who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.”
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C.S. Lewis
“He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods; the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”
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C.S. Lewis
“That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear”
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C.S. Lewis
“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!”
―
C.S. Lewis
