C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (1952)

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The proper motto is not Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever, but Be good sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.

C. S. Lewis
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.

C. S. Lewis
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all...

C. S. Lewis
The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.

C. S. Lewis
'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.

C. S. Lewis
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.

C. S. Lewis
The right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge.

C. S. Lewis
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the old Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence."

C. S. Lewis
We shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

C. S. Lewis
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

C. S. Lewis
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...

C. S. Lewis
When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.

C. S. Lewis
There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

C. S. Lewis
We treat our dogs as if they were "almost human": that is why they really become "almost human" in the end.

C. S. Lewis
Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body-different from one another and each contributing what no other could.

C. S. Lewis
Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.

C. S. Lewis
Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.

C. S. Lewis
Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly.

C. S. Lewis
Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

C. S. Lewis
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

C. S. Lewis
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. No belief will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

C. S. Lewis
Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

C. S. Lewis
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.

C. S. Lewis
Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

C. S. Lewis
In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.

C. S. Lewis
When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world

C. S. Lewis
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.

C. S. Lewis
Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.

C. S. Lewis
The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to teach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.

C. S. Lewis
There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.

C. S. Lewis