10 quotes
The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
I fancy that most of those who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
'Who are you? Nobody. Who is Porridge? the most important person there is.'
Surprised by Joy (1955)
A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere . . . God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
Enough had been thought, and said, and felt, and imagined. It was about time that something should be done.
Surprised by Joy (1955)
The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?
Surprised by Joy (1955)
I remember summing up what I took to be our destiny, in conversation with my best friend at Chartres, by the formula, "Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die."
Surprised by Joy (1955)
The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson: 'Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.'
Surprised by Joy (1955)