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The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

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
Ones
Dangerous
Society
Ideas
Argued
Assumed

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
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Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head, but don't be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud, one is safe from the worst form of pride.
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It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.
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I was not born to be free---I was born to adore and obey.
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For they (art and music) are not the thing itself they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
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I gave up Christianity at about 14. Came back to it when getting on for 30. Not an emotional conversion almost purely philosophical. I didn't want to. I'm not in the least a religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in.
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A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother nor an adult who turns to his fellow for company. Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.
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Surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things.
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Mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful.
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Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
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Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.
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Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.
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The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.
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But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality.
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We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.
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Please will you do my job for me.
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Either Jesus is the Son of God or a madman or worse. But His being just a great teacher? He's not left that open to us.
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We forgive, we mortify our resentment a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.
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An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.
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God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.
C. S. Lewis