Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.
I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.
He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.
Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has anything magical about it, but we cannot study the future.
Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.
Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
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?
Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all the acts and events that fill time are the definition, and it must be lived.
Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
Christ did not die for man because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because he is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely.
And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.
The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.
Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.
The old field of space, time, matter, and the senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field: God is not.
The continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.
Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.
The man can neither man, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.
The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.
Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?
I think it very wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.
The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
If the parents in each generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons' schools, the history of education would be very different.
But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.
Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.
We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.
But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder.
Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?
You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...
This is my password," said the King as he drew his sword. "The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.
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?
This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.
I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmán, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.
Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only 'mouth honour' and that decreasingly.
And what about you? You must be some kind of beardless dwarf?...You mean to say, that you're a daughter of Eve?...Y-yes, but, you are in fact... human?
The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.
We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument...Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.
There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.
I am struck here by the curious mixture of justice and injustice in our lives. We are blamed for our real faults but usually not on the right occasions.
Periods' are largely an invention of the historians. The poets themselves are not conscious of living in any period and refuse to conform to the scheme.