C.S. Lewis

February 28, 2014 by kevinstilley

C.S. Lewis – select quotes

A book which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last. A book which is not worth reading at age 50 is not worth reading at age 10.
~ in “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”

But if the lords were glum, the common people in the streets were huzzaing and throwing caps in the air. It would have puffed me up if I had not looked in their faces. There I could read their mind easily enough. Neither I nor Glome was in their thoughts. Any fight was a free show for them; and a fight of a woman with a man better still because an oddity–as those who can’t tell one tune from another will crowd to hear the harp if a man plays it with his toes.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seem to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity
Thou, who wouldst give no other sign, deliver me
Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of my head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take me from all my trumpery lest I die.
~ The Apologists Evening Prayer

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains. Suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.

He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart.

He wants a child’s heart, but a grown up’s head.

He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian-political act of all.
~ in God in the Dock

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

I had known Redival’s tears ever since I could remember. They were not wholly feigned, nor much dearer than ditchwater…. It’s likely enough she meant less mischief than she had done (she never knew how much she meant) and was now, in her fashion, sorry; but a new brooch, much more a new lover, would have had her drying her eyes and laughing in no time.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

I want God, not my idea of God.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

“We’ve had scores of matches together. The gods never made anyone–man or woman–with a better natural gift for it. Oh, Lady, Lady, it’s a thousand pities they didn’t make you a man.” (He spoke it as kindly and heartily as could be; as if a man dashed a gallon of cold water in your broth and never doubted you’d like it all the better.)
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

When I fail as a critic I may yet be useful as a specimen.

Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or the guilt of sin.

We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, and the contempt of this world along with the hope of our eternal country.

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Master List of Great Quotes

August 17, 2013 by kevinstilley

Phantastes

“It must have been more than thirty years ago that I bought…Phantastes. A few hours later I knew I had crossed a great frontier. . . . What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize, my imagination.”
~ C.S. Lewis

I bought this book and read it because of the quote above. Who wouldn’t want their imagination baptized?

But my experience was not that of C.S. Lewis. My imagination did not feel so much baptized as like it was being held under the water until it was about to drown.

The whole time I was reading the book I found myself searching for some kind of purpose or telos? Instead it seemed oh so random — much like what one experiences in a dream state.

Although I did not enjoy the book, I found it punctuated in places with beauty and brilliance. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book.

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”Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew sayes, A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; Ile but lye downe and bleede awhile, And then Ile rise and fight againe.“ Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton.

“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.”

“There was something noble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed.”

“But I love him not as I love thee. He was but the moon of my night; thou art the sun of my day, O beloved.”

“Past tears are present strength.”

“Tears are the only cure for weeping.”

“Joy’s a subtil elf, I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself.” CYRIL TOURNEAUR— The Revenger’s Tragedy.

“I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence.”

“I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being beloved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness.”

And, From the Introduction by C.S. Lewis:

“We have learned from Freud and others about those distortions in character and errors in thought which result from a man’s early conflicts with his father. Far the most important thing that we can know about George MacDonald is that his whole life illustrates the opposite process. An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. He was thus prepared in an unusual way to teach that religion in which the relation of Father and Son is of all relations the most central.”

“…and his son reports that he never, as boy or man, asked him for anything without getting what he asked. Doubtless this tells us as much about the son’s character as the father’s. ‘He who seeks the Father more than anything he can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.’ The theological maxim is rooted in the experiences of the author’s childhood.”

“The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.”

“The deception is all the other way round— in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from ‘the land of righteousness,’ never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen must inevitably be desired with all but sensuous desire— the thing (in Sappho’s phrase) ‘more gold than gold.’”

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Dialog Between JFK, C.S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley Somewhere Beyond Death

C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley all died within just a few hours of each other. Peter Kreeft explores their worldviews through an imaginary conversation held “on the other side.” Well worth the read!

May 10, 2008 by kevinstilley

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

Click on image

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. San Diego: Harcourt, 1956 [1984], 313 pages.

I enjoy reading books that have been recommended by people I know. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don’t. However, I almost always benefit from reading them if for no other reason than I come to know a little better the person who suggested the book.

When someone tells me that a book was meaningful to them, that they enjoyed it, or that it changed them, and I follow-up by reading that book myself, I have connected with that person on a much different level than if I had coffee with them or sat in Sunday School with them.

Thus, when I noticed on Barry Creamer’s blog profile that Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is one of his favorite books, it immediately went to the top of my to-be-read “on deck” stack. I have had the book in my library for years, but it never seemed to work its way to the top of the stack.

Although we rarely seem to make contact, I consider Barry to be one of my most precious friends. I think he is the best preacher of our generation, I admire his commitment to family and church, I am challenged by his understanding of the history of ideas, and,… well, you get the idea. He is an amazing fellow and I looked forward to engaging a book that is one of his favorites.

Thus, I came to the book with pretty high expectations. During the first 100 pages the book fell a little short of those expectations and I found myself wondering just why Barry thought so highly of it. It was interesting, even intriguing, but it was not spectacular. However, I could hardly put the book down during the final two-thirds of the book. I would not go as far as did the New York Herald Tribune when it proclaimed the book, “The most significant and triumphant work that Lewis has yet produced” but I certainly understand why they would think so. It is a great book and without reservation I give it an enthusiastic recommendation.

In Till We Have Faces Lewis reworks the myth of the Psyche and Cupid. It is a compelling story of Love, and Love’s imitators (desire, dependency, etc). Lewis’ adaptation is complete with vibrant characters, an absorbing plot, and many layers of meaning for those who can’t resist the temptation to explore and deconstruct them.

I expect this book to be on my list of favorite books read in 2007. And, I am planning to re-read it soon so it may very well appear on my list of favorite books read in 2008. Lewis once said that if a book was not worth reading multiple times, that it was not worth reading even once. This book has joined the Kevin Canon of books that I periodically re-read.

I hope that you will choose to read it also, and then drop back by to let me know what you think of it.

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Here are some of my favorite quotes from Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.

It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child.
~ page 247.

The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.
~ page 233.

Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.
~ page 131.

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