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Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

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
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Pity
Ransom
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Joy
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More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
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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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If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.
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Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.
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As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.
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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.
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Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
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I daren't come and drink, said Jill. Then you will die of thirst, said the Lion. Oh dear! said Jill, coming another step nearer.I suppose I must go and look for another stream then. There is no other stream, said the Lion.
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If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all
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To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'
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Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.
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A man whose life has been transformed by Christ cannot help but have his worldview show through.
C. S. Lewis
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In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
C. S. Lewis
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And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
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If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
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Every object you see before you at this moment -the walls, ceiling, and furniture, the book, your own washed hands and cut fingernails, bears witness to the colonization of Nature of Reason.
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When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].
C. S. Lewis
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The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.
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you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words.
C. S. Lewis
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We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
C. S. Lewis