22 quotes
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.
Mere Christianity (1952)
Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it.
Mere Christianity (1952)
The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.
Mere Christianity (1952)
I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.
Mere Christianity (1952)
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Mere Christianity (1952)
Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.
Mere Christianity (1952)
A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
Mere Christianity (1952)
All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
Mere Christianity (1952)
Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.
Mere Christianity (1952)
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Mere Christianity (1952)
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
Mere Christianity (1952)
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.
Mere Christianity (1952)
Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
Mere Christianity (1952)
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
Mere Christianity (1952)
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
Mere Christianity (1952)
What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.
Mere Christianity (1952)
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
Mere Christianity (1952)
According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
Mere Christianity (1952)
There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.
Mere Christianity (1952)
We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
Mere Christianity (1952)