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Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, I am what I do.

C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Broadcaster
Essayist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Instead
Freedom
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May
Necessity
Men
Opposite
Opposites
Perhaps

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.
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I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to rejoice as much as by anything else
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Delight is incomplete until it is expressed.
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In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem in Christianity we find the poem itself.
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And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
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You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humour while roaring with laughter.
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To admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.
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History is a story written by the finger of God.
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Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.
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And He [God] and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble--delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.
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Falling in love is something that happens to us, being is love is something we do. No passion is self preservatory.
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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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For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.
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A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
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The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'
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We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.
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Humility, after the first shock, is cheerful virtue.
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No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.
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...the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him... - C.S. Lewis: Weight of Glory
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Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake.
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