Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Things I Need to Remember

I finally finished "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. It has been my Sunday reading off and on for about a year now, but I'm really glad I read it! Some of the best bits:

"Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer."


" Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends... That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material."


"[Love] is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners aks, and receive, from God... Being 'in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise."


"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest... it eats up every possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."


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


"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world...If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world."


"This Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow."


"But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can."

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