Mere Quotes - Page 2

• Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Truth, Creativity

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Pride, Men

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

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• When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Christian, Ifs

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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• [To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Mean, Order

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• [Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self -will that we have been training ourselves into... It means killing part of yourself, under-going a kind of death.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Self, Training

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• The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Men, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.64, HarperCollins UK

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• Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.

  C. S. Lewis

  War, Love You, Christian Love

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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• Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Running, Loneliness

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Rebel, Needs

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.59, HarperCollins UK

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• Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in

  C. S. Lewis

  Looks, Christ, Thrown

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way.

  C. S. Lewis

  Trying, Gleam, Way

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.127, HarperCollins UK

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• 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

  Cutting, Able, Sitting

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.53, HarperCollins UK

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• God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Men, Car

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.54, HarperCollins UK

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• A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute.

  C. S. Lewis

  Self, Church, May

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.93, HarperCollins UK

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• If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Conceited, Thinking

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

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• Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins to pay for and had to spend a century in his or her own unknown purgatory even though the person seemed perfectly wholesome in this particular world.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Real, Reflection, Thinking

  Chuck Klosterman (2006). “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Order, Break Through

  John Stuart Mill (2003). “Mill's On Liberty”, p.81, Agora Publications, Inc.

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• …* to learn that money makes life smooth in some ways, and to feel how tight and threadbare life is if you have too little. * to despise money, which is a farce, mere paper, and to hate what you have to do for it, and yet to long to have it in order to be free from slaving for it. * to yearn toward art, music, ballet and good books, and get them only in tantalizing snatches.

  Sylvia Plath

  Art, Hate, Book

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• 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.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Life, Spiritual

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

  Jane Smiley

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Book

  Jane Smiley (2008). “13 Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.14, Anchor

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• The best hiding spots are not the most hidden; they're merely the least searched.

  Chris Pavone

  Visibility, Hiding, Spots

  Chris Pavone (2012). “The Expats: A Novel”, p.114, Broadway Books

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• Until a vegan or vegetarian enters the room, people don't see themselves as meat-eaters. They are merely 'eaters', and it is we vegans who have made them aware of what they are doing. Often this is discomforting.

  Carol J. Adams

  Food, People, Feminist

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

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Being In Love, Promise

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.197, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.

  C. S. Lewis

  Being In Love, Love Is, Feelings

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.97, HarperCollins UK

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• I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things You grant us in this mortal mere -- the fruit in the garden, too, was like this. Unknown, and therefore infinite. Eve and her mate swallowed eternity, every possible thing, and made the world between them.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Lying, Book, Garden

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