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A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave

C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
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Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
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Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Would
Christianity
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Knaves
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More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.
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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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Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
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Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.
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We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
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God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
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.
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The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
C. S. Lewis
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The most intense joy, lies not in the having, but in the desire, Delight that never fades, bliss that is eternal, Is only your, when what you most desire, is just out of reach...Anthony Hopkins, from the movie Shadowlands, where he plays C.S. Lewis
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No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.
C. S. Lewis
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We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men - things at once rational and animal.
C. S. Lewis
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Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.
C. S. Lewis
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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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Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it's a sign that you've got an extraordinary destiny--something greater than you could've imagined.
C. S. Lewis
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Friendship is born at that moment when a single particular person claims to a different: 'What! You far too? I assumed I was the only real one particular.
C. S. Lewis
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The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.
C. S. Lewis
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If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be played like an orchestra in which all instruments played the same note.
C. S. Lewis
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The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
C. S. Lewis
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Golly,' said Edmund under his breath, 'He's a retired star.
C. S. Lewis
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Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.
C. S. Lewis