We only learn to behave ourselves in the presence of God. C. S. Lewis More Quotes by C. S. Lewis More Quotes From C. S. Lewis Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. C. S. Lewis christian-inspirational godly motivational The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. C. S. Lewis victory goes-on may A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. C. S. Lewis errors inspiration christian God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. C. S. Lewis first-love soul love-is 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 life-and-death strong believe Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right. C. S. Lewis exercise animal men Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it. C. S. Lewis dying men christ You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. C. S. Lewis may forget inspirational Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself. C. S. Lewis silly men thinking 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. C. S. Lewis slavery men people [God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop. C. S. Lewis faith men thinking No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened. C. S. Lewis soul missing joy I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. C. S. Lewis england atheist night The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. C. S. Lewis nonsense common joy Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation. C. S. Lewis mystery consciousness wonder We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. C. S. Lewis god doubt inspirational Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. C. S. Lewis campaigns kings enemy No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. C. S. Lewis yawning grief wisdom To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. C. S. Lewis should worship love-you The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble. C. S. Lewis real hurt kindness
