We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.
C.S. Lewis
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon... C.S. LEWIS We do not choose to be born...We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of ou... JOSEPH EPSTEIN Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess o... PLUTARCH Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing ... THOMAS MERTON Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are ... PHILIP PULLMAN Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are ... PHILIP PULLMAN For many ages it has been allowed by sensible men, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in... JOHN WESLEY Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won... ALAIN DE BOTTON The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable... C.S. LEWIS Here is where our real selfhood is rooted, in the divine spark or seed, in the image of God imprinte... SUE MONK KIDD Noone has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed ... BERTRAND RUSSELL The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome... JOHN DEWEY The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome... JOHN DEWEY We don't have enough support for maternal leave and the kinds of things that some of the Europea... HILLARY CLINTON Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying for... C.S. LEWIS The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three ways. He m... ALDOUS HUXLEY Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, ... SAMUEL JOHNSON People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even fi... MICHAEL POLLAN Is the leadership of the world-wide church in the hands of men and women who know how to lead others... STEPHEN NEILL 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give... JAMES C. DOBSON Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. W... JOHN ORTBERG JR. Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. E... DAVID F. WELLS Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice ... ERNST JüNGER Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893 In prayer we ... A. J. GOSSIP When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down an... JESS C. SCOTT In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin. DEAN KOONTZ The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. ROLLO MAY The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have. CRAIG GROESCHEL The truth of Self is our strongest energy on earth and has the ability to erase the past, the past t... MARTHA CHAR LOVE Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity. ROLLO MAY At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowa... EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowa... EDWIN HUBBEL CHAPIN There is just one true God (I AM), and He is the giver of life! We have just one lifetime chance to ... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH We've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less. We've even grown so u... FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the... SAM KEEN 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 We may place blame, give reasons, and even have excuses; but in the end, it is an act of cowardice t... STEVE MARABOLI Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bo... ANTHONY BURGESS advance in consecration is conformity to the likeness of Jesus, which affects our dispositions and o... ANDREW MURRAY Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to jeopardize all ou... JOHN CHEEVER We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and ... ABRAHAM LINCOLN We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many y... ABRAHAM LINCOLN Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. There is no moderator or ombudsman online, and while the transparency of the web usually means that ... MATT MULLENWEG The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. He [C.S. Lewis] says elsewhere th... PETER KREEFT We live aware of God moment by moment. He is not part of our lives; He is our life. CRAIG GROESCHEL While one was an undergraduate, one could feel virtuous and indignant at the vices of Oxford, at lea... THOMAS HUGHES No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as bes... SáNDOR MáRAI If suicide be supposed a crime, it is only cowardice can impel us
to it. If it be no crime, both p... DAVID HUME Cowardice is the most terrible of vices. MIKHAIL BULGAKOV The sacrifices we make to stay healthy, to look good, the tasty foods we skip, the guilt trips, the ... CRISS JAMI Let us suppose, then, that we are dreaming, and that all these particulars--namely, the opening of t... RENE DESCARTES After we eat of the Apple of Knowledge, however, all of us start to be aware of ourselves, and our c... MARTIJN BENDERS There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, ... KARL BARTH Our diamond racket will stay in Belgium for at least another year. Obviously we were looking forward... BOB VERBEECK Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formida... RONALD REAGAN 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 Who are we? That is the first question. It is a question almost impossible to answer. But we all agr... LIN YUTANG The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humili... KARL MARX We are a region with two masters. One is India and the other Pakistan. Each of them want to stick to... GHULAM QADIR Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179 Seducers we, they say; but they lead men as... ORIGEN There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treas... J.R.R. TOLKIEN We have to repent of our blindness, our lukewarmness, and our disobedience, and turn back to the cen... STEPHEN NEILL Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary The fall was simply this, that so... ANDREW JUKES She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN We each are artists of the self, creating a collage -- a new and original work of art -- out of scra... JUDITH VIORST Negative thinking is associated with low self-esteem. A person who is low in self esteem displays hi... DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA Until a humility that rests in nothing less than the end and death of self, and which gives up all t... ANDREW MURRAY At least there is one book with which we all or few of us could have fun. DEYTH BANGER That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of GOD, who regards not the greatn... BROTHER LAWRENCE But we are at war, and we here at THE DAILY SHOW will do our best to keep you informed of any late-b... JON STEWART But we are at war, and we here at THE DAILY SHOW will do our best to keep you informed of any late-b... JON STEWART We took comfort in the knowledge that God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must ... DEAN KOONTZ One of the misfortunes of our time is, that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so muc... LOUIS KRONENBERGER One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much ... LOUIS KRONENBERGER Whenever we had to score, we did, and whenever we needed a stop, we got one. You could see fear in t... BILL WENNINGTON Almost everyone in our area is reporting at least one dead bird at the feeders, and some have seven ... BRUCE BACON Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a ... RALPH J. CUDWORTH As we watch the process in which the soul becomes thought or speech, we notice that many a time we e... ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formida... RONALD REAGAN [All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as m... WENDELL BERRY We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least som... LEARNED HAND We don’t have to take rejection as a reflection of our self-worth. If somebody who is important (o... MELODY BEATTIE We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and ... WENDELL BERRY Cowardice is when you hide away from your real self, and wear another self in pretense. Be yourself;... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our ... JOSHUA FOER Many of the questions we ask God can't be answered directly, not because God doesn't know the answer... N.T. WRIGHT Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 The fall was simp... ANDREW JUKES 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 We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of ... HERMANN HESSE But what is more, if we have succeeded in adding to the basic understanding of our universe and ours... HALDAN KEFFER HARTLINE We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians... BRENNAN MANNING I have plumbed the depth of human cowardice and I realized that there is only one way to be right, a... GEORGES BIDAULT Because they are so emphatically there, and so inconvertibly interior, it is almost inevitable that ... EUGENE H. PETERSON You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lif... C.S. LEWIS None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have al... STEPHEN FRY In essence they are faced with the unpleasant choice of managing this over a period of time or deali... FRED TURNER
More C.S. Lewis
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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