(A Periodic List of My Favorite Phrases That "Sing")
Some people have a great memory for sports statistics – or names – or faces – or historical events. It seems I have a different aptitude: a penchant to remember quotations (that are meaningful or pithy). Perhaps you'd expect that of me, since I'm a "word guy." So, without further ado, here is the fourth installment of ten delightful, insightful quotations. All of these come from the pen of one of my favorite writers: C.S. Lewis:
31. "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less."
32. “If we find in ourselves a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
33. “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
34. “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’; aim at Earth and you will get neither.”
35. “Die before you die, there is no chance after.”
36. “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have."
37. “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
38. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
39. “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.”
40. “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
Bonus Quotation:
“There's no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of heaven ridiculous by saying they do not want to spend eternity playing harps. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they shouldn't read them.”
All quotations above are from C.S. Lewis.