“When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”
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C.S. Lewis
“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly.
'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
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C.S. Lewis
“You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”
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C.S. Lewis
“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?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”
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C.S. Lewis
“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.”
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C.S. Lewis
“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.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”
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C.S. Lewis
“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
“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is much easier to pray for a bore than to go visit him.”
―
C.S. Lewis
