C.S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love and Literature. Andrea Assaf Kirk
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Название: C.S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love and Literature
Автор: Andrea Assaf Kirk
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Словари
isbn: 9780008309374
isbn:
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.
Mere Christianity
I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least. The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all. Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.
Reflections on the Psalms
Joy is the serious business of heaven.
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
The Great Divorce
The reader who finds these three episodes [in which Joy occurred] of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.
Surprised by Joy
We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.
The Four Loves
Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.
The Weight of Glory
It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.
Mere Christianity
We do not want merely to see beauty … We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
Transposition and Other Addresses
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
Mere Christianity
All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.
Surprised by Joy
Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
Mere Christianity
All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis
I call it joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from happiness and pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.
Surprised by Joy
If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
Mere Christianity
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes Evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
The Case for Christianity