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The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.

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
Without
Imagination
Heart
Heaven
Fact
Ceasing
History
Legend
Comes
Legends
Facts
Myth
Also
Christianity
Earth
Dying

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying.
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What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.
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The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.
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I want God, not my idea of God.
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There seems no plan because it is all plan.
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We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.
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The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.
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It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.
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Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.
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I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
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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.
C. S. Lewis
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We must stop regarding unpleasant or unexpected things as interruptions of real life. The truth is that interruptions are real life.
C. S. Lewis
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God is not an optional extra, He's an absolute must!
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My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.
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The event of falling in love... in one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being.
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Hell is a state of mind -- ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind -- is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.
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There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft.
C. S. Lewis
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Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
C. S. Lewis
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The only people who hate escapism are jailers.
C. S. Lewis
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If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful.
C. S. Lewis