CS Lewis Quotes

Let your experience be not one of failure but one that has taught you new things which you would not have known had you not tried

The onslaught of scruples is a problem well attested in the spiritual life, especially among the young, where religious observances must be done perfectly to achieve a certain result.

A puzzle is not a dead-end.

In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

I guess the breakfast burritos are going to have some extra protein in the morning.

One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.

It may be better to live under robber barons than omnipotent moral busybodies.

What is God's part and what is man's part? God's part is grace. Man's part is faith.

Grace means God gives. Faith means I receive.

GRACE means God does the work. FAITH means I let Him.

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.

There is something immensely scary about putting yourself out there for people to love or hate you, fan or pan you, review or screw you.

People don’t really have much of a choice when the heart falls. I’m lucky enough that mine just so happened to fall for you, Misty.”—Dylan to Misty in, When the Heart Falls

[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

Shamanism is not simply a component of society: on the contrary, shamanism, together with its tiered cosmos, can be said to be the overall framework of society.

Consciousness has evolved biologically and can therefore be explained biologically.

Primary consciousness is a state of being aware of things in the world – of having mental images in the present.But it is not accompanied by any sense of a person with a past and future…

Primary consciousness is a kind of ‘remembered present’…

I believe it is reasonable to assume that higher-order consciousness developed neurologically in Africa before the second wave of emigration to the Middle East and Europe.

Improved memory made possible the long-term recollection of dreams and visions and the construction of those recollections into a spirit world.

Once human beings had developed higher-order consciousness, they had the ability to see mental images projected onto surfaces and to experience afterimages.

For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions.

In Lascaux and other sites, hoofs are depicted to show their underside, or hoofprint.

The portable animal statuettes were therefore far more than decorative trinkets: they were reified three-dimensional spirit animals with all their prophylactic and other powers.

Shamans submit to death in order to serve their communities.

The Upper Palaeolithic figures known as ‘wounded men’ occur at Cougnac and Pech Merle, two sites in the Quercy district of France.

The ‘wounded men’ may, I argue, represent a form of shamanistic suffering, ‘death’ and initiation that was closely associated with somatic hallucinati

In altered states of consciousness, the nervous system itself becomes a ‘sixth sense’ that produces a variety of images including entoptic phenomena.

There were at least four contexts in which San shamans acquired insights into the spiritual world: – the trance dance, – special curing rituals, – viewing rock art, and – dreams.

The principal aim of a vision quest is to ‘see’ a spirit animal that will become the quester’s animal-helper and source of his power.

A shaman’s activities as a sorcerer, or his own conscious act of entry into the supernatural world, were a kind of “killing”.

If you are to suppose that natural reasons are the cause of everything, then it can only lead to the conclusion that consciousness is an illusion.

Believe in yourself, Follow your dreams, and all things are possible!

We have our own personal demons to deal with.

When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him.

I felt sure that [Oyarsa] was what we call "good, " but I wasn't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I had supposed.

To generalize is to be an idiot, " said Blake. Perhaps he went too far. But to generalize is to be a finite mind. Generalities are the lenses with which our intellects have to manage.

A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.

The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.

You can't admit to someone else what you're too damn afraid to admit to yourself.

Religion in art was a subtle business, best handled indirectly.

In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.

I would like to care more about you than about my feelings for you.

Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.

Feelings come and go, and when they come a good use can be made of them, but they cannot be our regular spiritual diet.

We appear to be saying something very important aboutsomething: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.

When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.

Man is now a horror to God and himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will.

A man got to have a code. - Omar Little