If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary; and after one's original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better; just as in an illness 'feeling better' is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results. A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world taking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.
C.S. Lewis
Related Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Is not the popular... C. S. LEWIS No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's i... WILLIAM FAULKNER The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl... TAMMARA WEBBER Being present is being connected to All Things. S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. The love you get, is equal to the love you give. BEN OAK How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g... C. JOYBELL C. I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations... C. JOYBELL C. Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is ... JAMES PHILLIPS Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ... CHRISTINA ENGELA The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS A conversion is incomplete if it does not leave one integrated into the Church. By this we do not me... WILLIAM BARCLAY Our conduct has a direct influence on how people think about the gospel. The world doesn't judge us ... CAROLYN MAHANEY Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 During the last year or so, I have come to ap... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER If Christianity should happen to be true -- that is to say, if its God is the real God of the univer... G. K. CHESTERTON Human nature must be changed if we are ever to have an end to war or to correct the wrong situations... PETER MARSHALL Remember!--It is Christianity to do good always--even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity... CHARLES DICKENS Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. A new day is here! yesterday is gone! tomorrow is preparing to come! but why is today here? ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH We must know that when we invite people into our lives, we are not just inviting people; but we are ... C. JOYBELL C. His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha... TEKOA MANNING THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We ... C. S. LEWIS PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL NATALIE URQUIETA She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl... IN THE MAKING If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is not from God, how can infidels explain ... J. C. RYLE There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made ... GEORGE SANTAYANA Life is fundamentally a mental state. We live in a dream world that we create. Whose life is truer, ... KILROY J. OLDSTER The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis. CRAIG GROESCHEL Any faith that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief onl... A.W. TOZER Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever... CRAIG CLEVENGER Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play. J.R. RIM If there is a symbol of our age, perhaps it is something that every factory worker does each day of ... EVELYN UNDERHILL “…when the whole group is together, each brining out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in al... C.S. LEWIS The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. Bu... SHELDON VANAUKEN When it's clear that we have a commitment to God that comes before anything else in our lives, most ... CRAIG GROESCHEL 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give... JAMES C. DOBSON i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g... SIMI GREWAL The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day. CRAIG GROESCHEL I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wis... THOMAS JEFFERSON The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a... ARUNDHATI ROY He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself LOIS LOWRY We may claim to believe in God, but we don't want to believe so much that it makes us different. CRAIG GROESCHEL Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come ... C.S. LEWIS I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may d... C.S. LEWIS Ash Wednesday Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977 Men must not content them... WILLIAM LAW There have always been two kinds of Christianity -- man's and Christ's. Does anyone today remember h... JOY DAVIDMAN We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all... MAURICE MAETERLINCK Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES It's pretty generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do abou... HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears to be. JEFFREY FRY One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much o... ALDO LEOPOLD How can we know that what Jesus has shown us of God is the truth; or how do we know when we look int... R. J. CAMPBELL I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix. DEYTH BANGER We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has ... WENDELL BERRY However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sen... JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Commemoration of Rose of Lima, Contemplative, 1617 Fallacies about Christianity must always be f... DONALD O. SOPER Wake every morning with the same feeling. Live up high and fly on top of the ceiling. I just know th... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES Mother Superior jump the gun... -The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun LAUREN MYRACLE David cuts through all the many needs, wants, and desires that may have been bouncing around inside ... CRAIG GROESCHEL Judaism and Christianity in themselves are distinctly separate entities, to be sure; but when consid... HANS JONAS The potential for loss of soul--to one degree or another--is the affliction of a society that as a c... DAPHNE ROSE KINGMA We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We ... WENDELL BERRY One must simply take the days of their lives as they happen. If you spend time worrying over what is... R.J. GONZALES To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened... UMBERTO ECO Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and e... PHILIP K. DICK It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly... SHELDON VANAUKEN A big sacrifice is coming, and you won't have the courage to make it. That will cost you dearly. It ... RICK RIORDAN The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind happiness not always... LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901 If ever we intend to take ... JOHN OWEN By the time we make our Christianity convertible, and not just a matter of culture, then we will bec... SUNDAY ADELAJA Certainly If John moschos where to come back today it is likely that he would find much more than th... WILLIAM DALRYMPLE My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son o... MAHATMA GANDHI All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom w... JOAN DIDION We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It... COLSON WHITEHEAD We have to learn to remind the other parents who think we're being careless when we loosen our grip ... LENORE SKENAZY This coherence of the Bible itself, and of the Bible and the Church, is a coherence and a unity set ... E. C. HOSKYNS Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option fo... DEEPAK CHOPRA He that begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect or churc... SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure ... CHARLES DICKENS That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The ... JOHN STUART MILL If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, wh... C.S. LEWIS We must resolve to live our lives and to build our lives in such a way, that if every ounce of fame ... C. JOYBELL C. The Bible consistently and directly indicates that when we give generously, we're serving, honoring,... CRAIG GROESCHEL It is a bit of a cliche to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course ... AMOR TOWLES The things i know now, i never knew then. I wish i knew. SOTONYE ANGA Christianity, in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the bible, is not unknown ... JAMES KENT Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do SOTONYE ANGA What marriage offers - and what fidelity is meant to protect - is the possibility of moments when wh... WENDELL BERRY Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be... GARY F EVANS... When the material things dominate your all thought by 100%, then it is time to reconsider a therapy,... GASPAR MIGUEL MARQUES If a poet or an artist puts himself into his Productions he is criticized. But that is exactly what ... SØREN KIERKEGAARD That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it. EMINEM We live aware of God moment by moment. He is not part of our lives; He is our life. CRAIG GROESCHEL Men say, "How are we to act, what are we to teach our children, now that we are no longer Christians... C. S. LEWIS There is nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an ... H. H. MUNRO
More C.S. Lewis
Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, ... C.S. LEWIS Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't mer... C.S. LEWIS There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. C.S. LEWIS The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, ... C.S. LEWIS The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are C.S. LEWIS The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some d... C.S. LEWIS I have said that she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of ... C.S. LEWIS My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this ide... C.S. 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LEWIS Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end... C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need... C.S. LEWIS Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping ... C.S. LEWIS When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has ... C.S. LEWIS It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fru... C.S. LEWIS Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. C.S. LEWIS While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwh... C.S. LEWIS Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all. C.S. LEWIS It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious fr... C.S. LEWIS We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. C.S. LEWIS The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w... C.S. LEWIS We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a... C.S. LEWIS Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o... C.S. LEWIS Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public ... C.S. LEWIS But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies ha... C.S. LEWIS In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself ... C.S. LEWIS Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for Go... C.S. LEWIS All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. C.S. LEWIS For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes ... C.S. LEWIS Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration ... C.S. LEWIS In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which ... C.S. LEWIS The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT ... C.S. LEWIS We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become ... C.S. LEWIS Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre... C.S. LEWIS We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for m... C.S. LEWIS A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. ... C.S. LEWIS [To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense i... C.S. LEWIS It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted crea... C.S. LEWIS I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you wan... C.S. LEWIS I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but becaus... C.S. LEWIS God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love ... C.S. LEWIS We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sa... C.S. LEWIS Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be ... C.S. LEWIS Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll h... C.S. LEWIS If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as... C.S. LEWIS Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make ev... C.S. LEWIS The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where th... C.S. LEWIS There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ... C.S. LEWIS Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden ... C.S. LEWIS There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those t... C.S. LEWIS I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as... C.S. LEWIS You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know ... C.S. LEWIS I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looki... C.S. LEWIS Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither. C.S. LEWIS There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civil... C.S. LEWIS The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea... C.S. LEWIS At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or ... C.S. LEWIS As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may thin... C.S. LEWIS Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our nat... C.S. LEWIS Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. C.S. LEWIS In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give. C.S. LEWIS Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the s... C.S. LEWIS Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist... C.S. LEWIS People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often. C.S. LEWIS Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of ... C.S. LEWIS The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but t... C.S. LEWIS I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no sh... C.S. LEWIS He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no... C.S. LEWIS I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ... C.S. LEWIS A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun... C.S. LEWIS We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the b... C.S. LEWIS To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C.S. LEWIS The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good be... C.S. LEWIS If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explana... C.S. LEWIS Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y... C.S. LEWIS You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. C.S. LEWIS When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, ... C.S. LEWIS In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates o... C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one ... C.S. LEWIS Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no ... C.S. LEWIS Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. C.S. LEWIS The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. C.S. LEWIS I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up o... C.S. LEWIS There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he... C.S. LEWIS A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking d... C.S. LEWIS They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you. Since but one voice is heard, i... C.S. LEWIS Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,... C.S. LEWIS Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is ... C.S. LEWIS The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I wa... C.S. LEWIS Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, ... C.S. LEWIS Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to av... C.S. LEWIS We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and... C.S. LEWIS Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike t... C.S. LEWIS No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C.S. LEWIS And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, am... C.S. LEWIS You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. C.S. LEWIS Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon hi... C.S. LEWIS I desired dragons with a profound desire. C.S. LEWIS What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on wh... C.S. LEWIS Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole w... C.S. LEWIS You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of... C.S. LEWIS But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do ... C.S. LEWIS You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect th... C.S. LEWIS Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Ind... C.S. LEWIS People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot ... C.S. LEWIS The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. C.S. LEWIS We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shov... C.S. LEWIS I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but becaus... C.S. LEWIS In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A y... C.S. LEWIS Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies t... C.S. LEWIS Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. C.S. LEWIS I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give... C.S. LEWIS Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he... C.S. LEWIS You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own m... C.S. LEWIS We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that... C.S. LEWIS If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explan... C.S. LEWIS All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are... C.S. LEWIS A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from thos... C.S. LEWIS Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods. C.S. LEWIS What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong tu... C.S. LEWIS If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precis... C.S. LEWIS Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead ... C.S. LEWIS Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither. C.S. LEWIS “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we ... C.S. LEWIS To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possib... C.S. LEWIS If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of t... C.S. LEWIS Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, b... C.S. LEWIS I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The gre... C.S. LEWIS The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epic... C.S. LEWIS Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense ... C.S. LEWIS The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small pric... C.S. LEWIS