We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
C.S. Lewis
Related If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th... GARY F EVANS... A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w... GABRIELLE ZEVIN We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live. The universe may for... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ... RALPH WALDO EMERSON Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ... THOMAS HARRIS If we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack. CRAIG GROESCHEL We have already had an amazing amount of support come from the community, but the only way our dream... JO VANDVER Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever. SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON But beware of this about callings: they may not lead us where we intended to go or even where we wan... STEVE GOODIER If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y... GARY F EVANS... It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may. We are never able to know ourselves ful... MOHANDAS GANDHI The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have. CRAIG GROESCHEL Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and di... VIRGINIA WOOLF All good people agree, And all good people say, All nice people, like Us, are We An... RUDYARD KIPLING When We have Patience in our minds and Love in our hearts, Nothing appears to be impossible or unrea... PHILIP T.M I am an optimist about the UK. We have been involved in trade with our European partners, which we w... IAIN DUNCAN SMITH We will win this battle because we are fighting for our lives and the lives of our Clanmates. Our en... ERIN HUNTER So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to... STEPHEN CHBOSKY The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to... C.S. LEWIS I was a slave, but never a fool. This empire is vast beyond imagining and we have killed only a frac... ANTHONY RYAN We are far from perfect but willing to be different. CRAIG GROESCHEL I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES I am aware that everyone that exists has a story, and we all exist because that story is important f... ARZELL Dae FATE NAYAE Nanagha Vandhuttoom Da, Sandy , Na Nata, London Lass,Russian Grapes, Ellorum Ippa Van... SATHESH KUMAR M I see the eight of us with our 'Secret Annexe' as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surround... ANNE FRANK The only thing that we cannot control is our supporters. JOSE MOURINHO We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become ... C.S. LEWIS The more we give, the more we reap the benefits of feeling good in helping others. We are all capabl... ANGIE KARAN Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever... CRAIG CLEVENGER Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had lov... JEFFREY EUGENIDES Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where... SUSAN J. TWEIT We act on that which we believe to be true. Yet if our truths are false, then we only act on our imp... CHRIS L. ANDREADIS Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. ... JOSHUA ISARD No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But... TAYLOR MALI We hate Simple Minds. They were no.1 in our Top Five Bands or Musicians who will have to be shot com... NICK HORNBY Science which has become a great power in the last century, has analyzed everything divine hande... FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books w... CORY DOCTOROW What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cea... WINSTON CHURCHILL What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never ce... WINSTON CHURCHILL What, the glass is half-full instead of half-empty? Bullshit. What they don't tell you is that regar... T.J. KLUNE She wanted to be herself at all costs. KIERA CASS We should not blame people by the mistakes of others. DANIEL MELGAçO The chakras are not only vortexes of energy, they are also centers for psychic reception. They are p... CATHERINE CARRIGAN We can only be sure of the present’ which in our hands. Postponement and laziness are the ropes wh... DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA If we're honest, most of us are doing okay. CRAIG GROESCHEL For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like... WILLIAM BARCLAY I'm already gone. I died that night on the side of that road with my sister. TRISHA LEAVER Perfection isn't everything," she said as she turned and walked away. "I think the flaws are what ma... TRISHA LEAVER With her I'd buried myself, every memory of who I was now, six feet under with the sister I'd put th... TRISHA LEAVER They shall say while they contend therein: / By Allah! we were certainly in manifest error, / When w... QURAN Perhaps they thought they could bring to this valley only those things they loved, leaving behind al... DEAN KOONTZ Convinced that we're living the whole time that we're dying. We decide to go out walking the wh... TEGAN QUIN As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there... OVID As for courage and will -- we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust ther... ANDRE NORTON I'd like to be more aggressive with the timetable, but I like to think three years. That will give u... GREG CRONIN When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN Everything passes by, and we are left with just our memories BEN OAK If we find a better fit, they have said they will bow out gracefully, ... Apollo says they are willi... CRAIG STEVENSON The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little fart... E. M. FORSTER Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 It wi... ROLAND ALLEN Word is already that we are only sending blacks out of this state. We are make (sic) a strategic err... JOHNNY ANDERSON This is one of the few games this year in which we had a size disadvantage, but we knew that going i... BROCK BLASSINGAME This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like... DAVID GRAEBER Air is approximately 21% oxygen, our brains feed off of oxygen. So basically we are all airheads. ANDONI GARCIA Inspired By Beauty In Creation We Are One DANIEL GILMAN Are shadows a shadowy reflection of the soul or is it a reflection of who we really are, or possibly... GARY F EVANS... We are this fucking stick in the end... DEYTH BANGER There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have alrea... THOMAS PAINE Yes, we will have our own Web site, where you can buy our products direct for us, but only because s... JULIETTE LEPOUTRE Oscar always said that books are truly our best friends. He said that they never think poorly of us ... ERICA SEHYUN SONG I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gon... E. M. FORSTER Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild bo... VIRGINIA WOOLF If the seed doesn't get planted, it can't become a toxic thornbush. We must guard our minds and our ... CRAIG GROESCHEL We know they are more experienced at this level. Also, they are professionals, which we are not. But... DIEGO CRUCIANI I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doe... FRANZ KAFKA Our failures in charity are chained to a narrowed vision of the world that makes too much of the dif... REBECCA GOLDSTEIN There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know ... L.M. MONTGOMERY Where would we be if throughout history, our greatest minds had feared that which they could not con... KARYN SOMERFIELD Often, we do not know where our choices will take us. This is why the best choices are often made ba... LORETTA LYNCH No innocence can shield a man from the calumnies of the wicked. [...] As a shadow follows its substa... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON We love films because they makes us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small... NINA LACOUR God and Destiny are not against us, rather they are for us, they are the ones who never forget the t... C. JOYBELL C. we'll look at every department in this government in terms of efficiency, and there will be changes.... JACK JOHNSON If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not... C.S. LEWIS We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experience... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re f... IRIS MURDOCH The great thing about women directors is that they're not only involved in the performances - th... BILLIE LOURD We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and... ALAIN DE BOTTON It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that ... DOUGLAS COUPLAND It is easy for Christians to have the false impression that once we have established a relationship ... CHARLES R. SWINDOLL I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gon... E. M. FORSTER We believe the most important issue we can address moving forward are the voting systems, ... We wan... KATHERINE HARRIS Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be d... GLORIA STEINEM Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be d... GLORIA STEINEM A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secre... RALPH WALDO EMERSON If we turn our backs of the Scythians who have provoked us, how shamefully shall we march against th... ALEXANDER THE GREAT
More C.S. Lewis
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LEWIS Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end... C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need... C.S. LEWIS Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping ... C.S. LEWIS When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has ... C.S. LEWIS It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fru... C.S. LEWIS Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. C.S. LEWIS While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwh... C.S. LEWIS Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all. C.S. LEWIS It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious fr... C.S. LEWIS We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. C.S. LEWIS The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w... C.S. LEWIS We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a... C.S. LEWIS Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o... C.S. LEWIS Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public ... C.S. LEWIS But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies ha... C.S. LEWIS In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself ... C.S. LEWIS Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for Go... C.S. LEWIS All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. C.S. LEWIS For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes ... C.S. LEWIS Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration ... C.S. LEWIS In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which ... C.S. LEWIS The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT ... C.S. LEWIS We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become ... C.S. LEWIS Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre... C.S. LEWIS We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for m... C.S. LEWIS A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. ... C.S. LEWIS [To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense i... C.S. LEWIS It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted crea... C.S. LEWIS I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you wan... C.S. LEWIS I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but becaus... C.S. LEWIS God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love ... C.S. LEWIS We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sa... C.S. LEWIS Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be ... C.S. LEWIS Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll h... C.S. LEWIS If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as... C.S. LEWIS Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make ev... C.S. LEWIS The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where th... C.S. LEWIS There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ... C.S. LEWIS Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden ... C.S. LEWIS There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those t... C.S. LEWIS I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as... C.S. LEWIS You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know ... C.S. LEWIS I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looki... C.S. LEWIS Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither. C.S. LEWIS There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civil... C.S. LEWIS The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea... C.S. LEWIS At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or ... C.S. LEWIS As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may thin... C.S. LEWIS Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our nat... C.S. LEWIS Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. C.S. LEWIS In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give. C.S. LEWIS Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the s... C.S. LEWIS Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist... C.S. LEWIS People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often. C.S. LEWIS Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of ... C.S. LEWIS The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but t... C.S. LEWIS I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no sh... C.S. LEWIS He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no... C.S. LEWIS I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ... C.S. LEWIS A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun... C.S. LEWIS We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the b... C.S. LEWIS To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C.S. LEWIS The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good be... C.S. LEWIS If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explana... C.S. LEWIS Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y... C.S. LEWIS You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. C.S. LEWIS When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, ... C.S. LEWIS In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates o... C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one ... C.S. LEWIS Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no ... C.S. LEWIS Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. C.S. LEWIS The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. C.S. LEWIS I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up o... C.S. LEWIS There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he... C.S. LEWIS A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking d... C.S. LEWIS They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you. Since but one voice is heard, i... C.S. LEWIS Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,... C.S. LEWIS Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is ... C.S. LEWIS The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I wa... C.S. LEWIS Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, ... C.S. LEWIS Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to av... C.S. LEWIS We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and... C.S. LEWIS Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike t... C.S. LEWIS No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C.S. LEWIS And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, am... C.S. LEWIS You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. C.S. LEWIS Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon hi... C.S. LEWIS I desired dragons with a profound desire. C.S. LEWIS What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on wh... C.S. LEWIS Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole w... C.S. LEWIS You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of... C.S. LEWIS But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do ... C.S. LEWIS You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect th... C.S. LEWIS Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Ind... C.S. LEWIS People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot ... C.S. LEWIS The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. C.S. LEWIS We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shov... C.S. LEWIS I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but becaus... C.S. LEWIS In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A y... C.S. LEWIS Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies t... C.S. LEWIS Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. C.S. LEWIS I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give... C.S. LEWIS Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he... C.S. LEWIS You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own m... C.S. LEWIS We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that... C.S. LEWIS If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explan... C.S. LEWIS All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are... C.S. LEWIS A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from thos... C.S. LEWIS Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods. C.S. LEWIS What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong tu... C.S. LEWIS If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precis... C.S. LEWIS Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead ... C.S. LEWIS Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither. C.S. LEWIS “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we ... C.S. LEWIS To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possib... C.S. LEWIS If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of t... C.S. LEWIS Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, b... C.S. LEWIS I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The gre... C.S. LEWIS The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epic... C.S. LEWIS Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense ... C.S. LEWIS The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small pric... C.S. LEWIS