C.S. Lewis ( 10 of 145 )
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot read more
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. read more
To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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.
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which read more
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers read more
Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to read more
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
Don't imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he read more
Don't imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he won't be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who's always telling you that, of course, he's nobody. Probably all you'll think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a bit envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He won't be thinking about himself at all. There I must stop. 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're not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can read more
Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?
