if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. C. S. Lewis More Quotes by C. S. Lewis More Quotes From C. S. Lewis I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can. C. S. Lewis people art thinking You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens. C. S. Lewis moon men dirty Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables. C. S. Lewis eye vegetables character Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. C. S. Lewis best-friend relationship friendship The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. C. S. Lewis knights men mean Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them. C. S. Lewis insomnia sleep trying Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain. C. S. Lewis vocation disability gains It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes. It is, to me at any rate, impossible to regard the thoughts which make up naturalism in that way and, at the same time, regard them as a real insight into external reality...If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat. C. S. Lewis events cutting real Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose. C. S. Lewis writing mean people Because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world more than those who know no other. C. S. Lewis this-world knows world Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others. C. S. Lewis sin motivational thinking Love is the great conqueror of lust. C. S. Lewis true-love lust love-is When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from out friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery. C. S. Lewis intellectual secret listening Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house. C. S. Lewis home sky mean The Glory of God, and, as our only means of glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life. C. S. Lewis real soul mean Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map. C. S. Lewis confused real christian 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. C. S. Lewis cutting wisdom struggle I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. C. S. Lewis men philosophy art Chronological snobbery is 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. You must find 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. C. S. Lewis fashion intellectual acceptance I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless he sees that it is good for him to wait. C. S. Lewis adoption waiting inspirational
