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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.

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
Rebel
Modifies
Generation
Bequeathed
Tradition
Resists
Limits
Rebels
Exercise
Successors
Generations
Predecessors
Environment
Exercises
Power
Provoking

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The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.
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We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
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Golly,' said Edmund under his breath, 'He's a retired star.
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Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
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Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
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The humblest praise most, while cranks & malcontents praise least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible
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As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only as harmless as doves, but also as wise as serpents. He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head.
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The worst of sleeping out of doors is that you wake up so dreadfully early. And when you wake up you have to get up because the ground is so hard you are uncomfortable. And it makes matters worse if there is nothing but apples for breakfast and you have had nothing but apples for supper the night before.
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The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
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Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.
C. S. Lewis
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Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.
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All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
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Watchin' and listenin' is the thing at present not talking.
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Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females—and there is more in that than you might suppose.
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Truth and falsehood are opposed but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.
C. S. Lewis
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And she never could remember and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.
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There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
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Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my conversion. Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?
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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Have you not seen that in our days Of any whose story, song or art Delights us, our sincerest praise Means, when all's said, 'You break my heart?
C. S. Lewis