C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewiswas a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He held academic positions at both Oxford University, 1925–54, and Cambridge University, 1954–63. He is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth29 November 1898
CountryIreland
A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.
Humility, after the first shock, is cheerful virtue.
He (God) loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.
The great thing is to be found at one's post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though the world might last a hundred years.
We may note in passing that He (Jesus) was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild admiration.
How difficult it is to avoid having a special standard for oneself.
For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.
Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.
Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.
Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.
It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere.
The command "Be ye prfect" is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and he is going to make good his words. He will make us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature...a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly.
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that morn.
If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.