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Quote by C.S. Lewis

“The last scene of Dr Faustus where the man raves and implores on the edge of Hell is, perhaps, stage fire. The last moments before damnation are not often so dramatic. Often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. But he cannot make this knowledge real to himself. Some tiny habitual sensuality, some resentment too trivial to waste on a blue-bottle, the indulgence of some fatal lethargy, seems to him at that moment more important than the choice between total joy and total destruction. With eyes wide open, seeing that the endless terror is just about to begin and yet (for the moment) unable to feel terrified, he watches passively, not moving a finger for his own rescue, while the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul.”

Quote by C.S. Lewis

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C.S. Lewis

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“MacBeth and Me Down below the twisted step, The tavern awaits night's Dark guests. Fires aglow hiss the emb'rous red, And Hell waits upon her most prized dead. A charmed man of thirty or so, Ambition's son who vaults so low. Tarries he now at table's dread, and drinks The draught of one Soul condemned. Lingers he so, o'er beef and wassail, Choicest portions of desires assailed. Presses he down lusts murd'rous and hard, A driving rain of the blackest of hearts. 'Prince of Cumberland,' he had to traverse, Or fall asunder, star-crossed to his curse. Sees shadows now and smiles slight at me, Knows he a kindred, in like debauchery. Eyes my spirit through cracked mirror. Banquo saw too and was butchered in Fear. The Lady also, unsexed, it seemed (Tended she cravings 'cided that King). Aye, locked below under tomorrow's step, He lies awaiting in damned inquest. Mortals what I am and to what I agree, Bids me to his table, Macbeth and me. --Poems on the Run, vol. I”

“We can not, therefore, reserve as sacred anything that is not truth and yet we cannot turn from things of truth have inspired us in our everyday lives. We must merely embrace both hard and soft truths that must not be avoided. This does not mean we can reserve for ourselves the right to be self-righteous nor call others self-righteous simply because they disagree with us.”

“And thus Lancelot died, though the songs he had paid for lived on, and to this day he is celebrated as a hero equal to Arthur. Arthur is remembered as a ruler, but Lancelot is called the warrior. In truth he was the King without land, a coward, and the greatest traitor of Britain, and his soul wanders Lloegyr to this day, screaming for its shadowbody that can never exist because we cut his corpse into scraps and fed it to the river. If the Christians are right, and there is a hell, may he suffer there for ever.”

“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something—as conservation problems go—that is disproportionately and metaphysically sinister. The outermost circle of the Devil’s world seems to be a moat filled mainly with DDT. Next to it is a moat of burning gasoline. Within that is a ring of pinheads each covered with a million people—and so on past phalanxed bulldozers and bicuspid chain saws into the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam.”