Quotes by Theologians - Page 71

Once you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.
C.S. Lewis
He cannot ravish. He can only woo.
C.S. Lewis
We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique.
C.S. Lewis
Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.
C.S. Lewis
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground...All the same, it is His invention, not ours...All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden...An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.
C.S. Lewis
As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance.
C.S. Lewis
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
C.S. Lewis
Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied.
C.S. Lewis
The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.
C.S. Lewis
He's a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a façade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it... He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures.
C.S. Lewis
No man will love you, though you gave your life for him, unless you have a pretty face. So (might it not be?), the gods will not love you (however you try to pleasure them, and whatever you suffer) unless you have that beauty of soul. In either race. for the love of men or the love of a god, the winners and losers are marked out from birth. We bring our ugliness, in both kinds, with us into the world, with it our destiny.
C.S. Lewis
Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.
C.S. Lewis
Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper throughs than anyone else.
C.S. Lewis
...true wisdom is the skill and practice of death.
C.S. Lewis
And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another.
C.S. Lewis
Did I Not Say To YouDid I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?” Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal. Did I not say to you, “Be not content with worldly forms, for I am the fashioner of the tabernacle of your contentment?” Did I not say to you, “I am the sea and you are a single fish; go not to dry land, for I am your crystal sea?” Did I not say to you, “ Go not like birds to the snare; come, for I am the power of flight and your wings and feet?” Did I not say to you, “ They will waylay you and make you cold, for I am the fire and warmth and heat of your desire?” Did I not say to you, “ They will implant in you ugly qualities so that you will forget that I am the source of purity to you?” Did I not say to you, “Do not say from what direction the ser- vant’s affairs come into order?” I am the Creator without directions. If you are the lamp of the heart, know where the road is to the house; and if you are godlike of attribute, know that I am your Maser.
Jalaluddin Rumi
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.First, to let go of life.In the end, to take a step without feet;to regard this world as invisible,and to disregard what appears to be the self.Heart, I said, what a gift it has beento enter this circle of lovers,to see beyond seeing itself,to reach and feel within the breast.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The resurrection was not the reversal of a defeat but the manifestation of a victory.
Bishop Lesslie Newbigin
A good story conveys a message that strengthens our values.
Ronald R. Cooke
Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.
Jerome
Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.
C.S. Lewis
All earthly desires are but streams, but God is the ocean.
Jonathan Edwards
The wind of God is always blowing... but you must hoist your sail.
François Fénelon
Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret,and in exchange gain the Ocean.Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honor,and in the arms of the Sea be secure.Who indeed should be so fortunate?An Ocean wooing a drop!In God's name, in God's name, sell and buy at once!Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.
Krister Stendahl
A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.
Frederick Buechner
People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas,at the long course of the rivers,at the vast compass of the ocean,at the circular motion of the stars,and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
Augustine of Hippo
An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness.
C.S. Lewis
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.
C.S. Lewis
But we are curious about the result, just as we are curious about the way a book turns out. We do not want to know anything about the anxiety, the distress, the paradox. We carry on an esthetic flirtation with the result. It arrives just as unexpectedly but also just as effortlessly as a prize in a lottery, and when we have heard the result, we have built ourselves up.
Søren Kierkegaard
We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading.
C.S. Lewis
We read to know we are not alone.
C.S. Lewis
Art is not a gift which a few people are given, but rather it is a gift which most people throw away.
Fred B. Craddock
The special calling of the artist is to call the world to a kind of rest or remind it of its restlessness
William A. Dyrness
To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him.
C.S. Lewis
An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.
G.K. Chesterton
The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.
C.S. Lewis
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.
G.K. Chesterton
That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.
C.S. Lewis
Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.
G.K. Chesterton
He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.
G.K. Chesterton
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. Chesterton
Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.
Eugene H. Peterson
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.
John Piper
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Albert Schweitzer
My Soul is my Guide, for my Soul is of that Abode I will not Speak of the Earthly, I am of the Unknown.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
G.K. Chesterton
Thou I cannot so freely say, My heart is with thee, my soul longeth after thee ; yet can I say, I long for such a longing heart (648).
Richard Baxter
You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.
C.S. Lewis
It was a dictum of his that the soul's energy thrives when the body's desires are feeblest.
Athanasius of Alexandria
As it is with spiritual discoveries and affections given at first conversion, so it is in all subsequent illuminations and affections of that kind; they are all transforming. There is a like divine power and energy in them as in the first discoveries; they still reach the bottom of the heart, and affect and alter the very nature of the soul, in proportion to the degree in which they are given. And a transformation of nature is continued and carried on by them to the end of life, until it is brought to perfection in glory.
Jonathan Edwards
Let us not believe that an external fast from visible food alone can possibly be sufficient for perfection of heart and purity of body unless with it there has also been united a fast of the soul. For the soul also has its foods that are harmful. Slander is its food and indeed one that is very dear to it. A burst of anger also supplies it with miserable food for an hour and destroys it as well with its deadly savor. Envy is food of the mind, corrupting it with its poisonous juices and never ceasing to make it wretched and miserable at the prosperity and success of another. Vanity is its food which gratifies the mind with a delicious meal for a time but afterward strips it clear and bare of all virtue. Then vanity dismisses it barren and void of all spiritual fruit. All lust and shift wanderings of heart are a sort of food for the soul, nourishing it on harmful meats but leaving it afterwards without a share of its heavenly bread and really solid food. If then, with all the powers we have, we abstain from these in a most holy fast our observance of the bodily fast will be both useful and profitable.
John Cassian
When soul risesInto lipsYou feel the kiss You have wanted
Jalaluddin Rumi
Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature.
C.S. Lewis
Words are truly the image of the soul.
Basil the Great
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
G.K. Chesterton
Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.
C.S. Lewis
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
John Calvin
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
Jalaluddin Rumi
It is also said that the sheep heed the Shepherd, because they know his voice. Is it true that men recognize Christ's call and respond to it? In one sense it must be, for he has said so; yet much in me qualifies the statement. Actually I respond much more readily to the call of 'the others'; I neither really understand Christ's summons nor follow it. Therefore, in order that I may hear, he must not only speak, but also open my ears to his voice. Part of me, the profoundest part, listens to it, but superficial, loud contradiction often overpowers it. The opponents with whom God must struggle in order to win us are not primarily ‘the others,’ but ourselves; we bar his way. The wolf who puts the hireling to flight is not only outside; he is also within. We are the arch-enemy of our own salvation, and the Shepherd must fight first of all with us – for us.
Romano Guardini