C.S. Lewis (53)
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The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.
the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.
You must find out why it went out of date.
Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.
From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also 'a period,' and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
One last word, about getting rid of fear. Two men had to cross a dangerous bridge. The first convinced himself that it would bear them, and called this conviction Faith. The second said 'Whether it breaks or holds, whether I die here or somewhere else, I am equally in God's good hands.' And the bridge did break and they were both killed: and the second man's Faith was not disappointed and the first man's was.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf worldThe Problem of Pain
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.
I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife's work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, miners, cars, government etc. exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr. Johnson said, "To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour". (1st to be happy to prepare for being happy in our own real home hereafter: 2nd in the meantime to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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 Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief [in Christian doctrine] nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. . . . Do not most people simply drift away?Mere Christianity
Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.
When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.
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.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?
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[Humor] is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow.... Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a joke.
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning
I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
I use the word Miracle to mean an interference with Nature by supernatural power. Unless there exists, in addition to Nature, something else which we may call the supernatural, there can be no miracles.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.Mere Christianity
There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in othersMere Christianity, 91
Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgiveMere Christianity (115)
the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.Mere Christianity (121)
Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose, only upon the Beloved who will never pass away.
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
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
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 said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
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. The Problem of Pain (53)
The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything.
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Mere Christianity (Book3:Charity)
I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. Surprised by Joy (Chapter 7 Paragraph 20)
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. The Problem of Pain(93)
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to 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 unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The Four Loves
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