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“God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.”

WantNeedsGivingFirstsHumansChildrenRealDesireCausesGoalLove IsExistencePovertyTeachObjectsLoversGoodnessDefinitionsBelovedSelflessPlatoHis LoveGod's LoveDerivativesHuman Love
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”

IfsMenWantHeartSoulRunningDesireHeavenEnjoyGoalWalksObjectsExerciseOffersPureSafeRewardsDefinitionsMotiveLeapHis LoveBribeDisinterestedMercenary
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.”

ThinkingWorldGivingFactsGamesEnjoyTermPlayerPoetReaderLoversHonorPraiseObviousDelightRingsEnjoymentComplimentApprovalMistressCountrysideWalkersOverflow
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

ThinkingChildrenBodySpeakStarsDifficultVoiceWaterTalkingFireHeardTreeBloodSkyDivineColdWalkingPureBlueAwakeBeastLionsFlashVeilsBlue SkyOverheadNarnia
Book:A Year With Aslan: Words of Wisdom and Reflection from the Chronicles of Narnia
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“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

KnowsFirstsBelieveLongMatterBeliefStrongEasySoundKnow HowBoxesLife And DeathTrustedFalsehoodRopeCordsPrecipiceGrief Observed
Book:A Grief Observed
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“Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.”

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Book:A Grief Observed
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“Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantKindRealUseFeelingsChristianMy FriendsExcitingTheologyDoctrineDesertConfusedMapsPiousChristian Doctrine
Book:Mere Christianity
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“Lucy said, 'We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.' 'No fear of that,' said Aslan. 'Have you not guessed?' Their hearts leapt, and a wild hope rose within them. 'There was a real railway accident,' said Aslan softly. 'Your father and mother and all of you are- as you used to call it in the Shadowlands- dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”

MenMeanFacesBloodSightFamiliarCompromiseGentleIronHallsGuestsFierceModestLimbsKnightsMeekMeeknessRaggedStumpsFerocityDemure
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility...According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

MindSelfStatesInspirationChristianEvilTalkingMoralVirtueTeacherHumilityPrideEssentialsDevilOppositesMereGreedVicesComparisonBitesState Of MindConceitDrunkennessFleasAnti GodChristian Teachers
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”

IfsMomentsLossGriefCuttingRoundsDareLegsCirclesRepeatsEmptinessPhasesNoveltyEmergingSpiralsGrief ObservedStillbirth
Book:A Grief Observed
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“The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”

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Book:A Year with C. S. Lewis: 365 Daily Readings from his Classic Works
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“Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains [heaven]. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”

IfsHas BeensBodySpiritualDesireEnergyHeavenNaturalPoorBloodGoes OnMountainWeakRaisedFleshLustAriseSubmitLowestRichnessWhisperingFlesh And BloodLizardsStallions
Author:C. S. Lewis
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