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For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

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
Magic
Wise
Subdue
Wish
Cardinal
Science
Cardinals
Reality
Applied
Problem
Conform
Soul
Alike
Men
Wishes

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Things never happen the same way twice.
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The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
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There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.
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Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.
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We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.
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They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.
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For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.
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Remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.
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I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.
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It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.
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Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want
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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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If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity.
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The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
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The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.
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The only people who hate escapism are jailers.
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Actually it seems to me that one can hardly say anything either bad enough or good enough about life.
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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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Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
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Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for to make them worth it.
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