Real Love Isn’t Always Kind
… Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved…the mere “kindness” which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
More on the Right Use of Pity
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. … … The passion of Pity … the ache that draws men to concede […]
On the Misuse of Pity
Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But …. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. — C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce
On Good from Evil
Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse … those who do the simple evil. … Offenses must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. — C.S. […]
Are We Settling for Less than the Best?
… our desires [are] not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a […]
Moments of Growth
In every department of life, [a sense of disappointment or anticlimax] marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. — C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters
And Which One Are You?
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.” — C. S. Lewis
“It’s for Your Own Good” … or Is It?
Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good […]
What Is a Good Prayer?
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard. — C.S. Lewis
Moments of Growth
In every department of life, [a sense of disappointment or anticlimax] marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters