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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

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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
Must
Truths
Necessarily
Choose
Books
Age
Reading
Neglectful
Better
Contain
Book
Precisely

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving.
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Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.
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Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again.
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To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator.
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If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.
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Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than other people in that respect.
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As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.
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A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible.
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One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God.
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The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ.
C. S. Lewis
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I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
C. S. Lewis
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A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.
C. S. Lewis
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Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
C. S. Lewis
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It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible Gods and Goddesses. To remember that the dullest, and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.
C. S. Lewis
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War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.
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True friends... face in the same direction, toward common projects, interests, goals.
C. S. Lewis
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Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C. S. Lewis
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He cannot tempt to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
C. S. Lewis
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If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?
C. S. Lewis
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A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest. He also said: No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally - and often far more - worth reading at the age of 50 and beyond.
C. S. Lewis