{"quotes":[{"text":"And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","god","human","inspirational","mere-christianity","religious","slavery"],"id":5891,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.No, said Tolkien, they are not....Just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.","author":"Humphrey Carpenter","tags":["c-s-lewis","christ","myth","myths","splintered-light","sub-creator","tolkien","true-myth"],"id":6950,"author_id":"Humphrey+Carpenter"},{"text":"In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","literature","quote"],"id":14188,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","devout","faith","feelings","god"],"id":15943,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.","author":"William Nicholson","tags":["c-s-lewis","god","pain","suffering"],"id":20249,"author_id":"William+Nicholson"},{"text":"Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.","author":"William Nicholson","tags":["c-s-lewis","god","salvation","self-sufficiency"],"id":36651,"author_id":"William+Nicholson"},{"text":"Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","children","grown-ups","narnia","silliness"],"id":37119,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","courage","ethics","honor","morality","religion","tao"],"id":53590,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","till-we-have-faces","writing","writing-craft"],"id":60679,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"},{"text":"If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species.","author":"C.S. Lewis","tags":["c-s-lewis","divorceine-love","obedience","pain","suffering"],"id":67858,"author_id":"C.S.+Lewis"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":40,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}