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We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century [...] lies where we have never suspected it [...] The only palliative is [...] by reading old books. [...] the books of the future would be just as good [...], but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
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Belfast
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Clive Hamilton
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CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
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More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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Men propound mathematical theorems in besieged cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on the scaffold, discuss a new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache it is our nature.
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There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.
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Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
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Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be vulgarity - like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.
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Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters too much speaking in holy tones.
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What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
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On many questions and specially in view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party, . . . they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries. The idea that a Puritan was a repressed and repressive person would have astonished Sir Thomas More and Luther about equally.
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The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some different event.
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To walk out of his will is to walk into nowhere.
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I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
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Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.
C. S. Lewis
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If the world is meaningless, then so are we if we mean something, we do not mean alone.
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It's so large It's the world dear, did you think it'd be small? smaller
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We have discovered that the scheme of 'outlawing war' has made war more like an outlaw without making it less frequent and that to banish the knight does not alleviate the suffering of the peasant.
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The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.
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I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.
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Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
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The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
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You all know, said the Guide, that security is mortals' greatest enemy.
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Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.
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