“If we fail to forgive ourselves when God has done so, we make ourselves a higher judge than Him.”
“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give up.”
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which . . . you would be strongly tempted to worship. . . . There are no ordinary people.”
| “Love Thy Neighbor,” in The Joyful Christian (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 197.
“Have ye received his image in your countenances?” “Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into . . . a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.”
| Mere Christianity
“Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. 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 a word without meaning.”
“It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses – say motherly love or patriotism – are good, and others, like sex or fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which fighting instinct or sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining motherly love or patriotism.”
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under.”
| The Screwtape Letters
“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.”
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”