Mere Christianity

Some favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis' masterpiece:

"When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest."

"If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again."

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

"Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect...Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed."

"But there is difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning comes...when you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all."

"God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food out spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other."
*many of us waste many years trying to fill this God-shaped hole in our soul with alcohol, sex, money, book-learning, etc. The reason 12-step programs like AA work is because the 1st step is humbly admitting your brokenness, 2nd step is acknowledging there's something bigger than you that can handle it, and the 3rd step is letting Him. Just my two cents. That was free. :)

"Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing a part of yourself..."

"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?"

"...the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. HE DOES NOT THINK GOD WILL LOVE US BECAUSE WE ARE GOOD, BUT THAT GOD WILL MAKE US GOOD BECAUSE HE LOVES US..."

"If somebody else made me, for His own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself."

"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play."

The Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.
Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it... Christianity is an education itself.
Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures, and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further.
Justice...the old name for everything we should now called fairness; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.
Fortitude includes both kinds of courage - the kind that faces danger and the kind that "sticks it" under pain. "Guts"...

"(A Christian society) is to be cheerful: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues...

On charity: "the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare."

"...That is why Christian are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it."

"...every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowing turning this central thing into either a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either...in harmony with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

"When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him."

"A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems."

"We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help... After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again... It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God."

"...THOSE WHO ARE SERIOUSLY ATTEMPTING CHASTITY ARE MORE CONSCIOUS, AND SOON KNOW A GREAT DEAL MORE ABOUT THEIR OWN SEXUALITY THAN ANYONE ELSE."

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing... It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all... But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - 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; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace with both parents ask, and receive, from God."

"THE THRILL YOU FEEL ON FIRST SEEING SOME DELIGHTFUL PLACE DIES AWAY WHEN YOU REALLY GO LIVE THERE. Does this mean it would better... not to live in the beautiful place? By no means... IF YOU GO THROUGH WITH IT, THE DYING AWAY OF THE FIRST THRILL WILL BE COMPENSATED FOR BY A QUIETER AND MORE LASTING KIND OF INTEREST. WHAT IS MORE, IT IS JUST THE PEOPLE WHO ARE READY TO SUBMIT TO THE LOSS OF THE THRILL AND SETTLE DOWN TO THE SOBER INTEREST, WHO ARE LIKELY TO MEET NEW THRILLS IN SOME QUITE DIFFERENT DIRECTION... But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and fewer... and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life."

"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."

"The real test of being in the presense of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether."

"The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you."

"...if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble - delightly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life."

"THE SMALLEST GOOD ACT TODAY IS THE CAPTURE OF A STRATEGIC POINT FROM WHICH, A FEW MONTHS LATER, YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GO ON TO VICTORIES YOU NEVER DREAMED OF."

"Aim at heaven and you'll get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you'll get neither."