C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis

First, to those of you who have given us Amazon gift cards over the past few years, I am about to use some of them to buy the rest of C.S. Lewis's books for our collection.  If I am going to have a son named for him, I should probably have all the books in my house.  There are a few of his books that I know I have read and own, but I cannot find them.  The last time I remember reading them is in college. Although, college seems not so long ago, it has been five years and who knows where they could be. Really? I graduated with my undergraduate degree five years ago? Wow. Time sure flies by.

I am re-reading Mere Christianity, which I was able to find (I am also reading the Chronicles of Narnia to Martin lately). Recently, I finished the chapter on Christian Marriage. I would quote the whole chapter here, but I believe that would be against the copyrights of the book. So I have just put some particularly great quotes below.  You will have to read the whole chapter, and maybe even the book, to grasp the full, awesome writing of Mr. Lewis.

“But, as I said before, 'the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of our own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs'. Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it.  You cannot make it the basis of a while life.  It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even last at all.  Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.”

“People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on 'being in love' for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change – not realizing that, when the have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one.”

“That is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do.  Let the thrill go – let it die away – go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follows – and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decided to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.  It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all around them.  It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”

“Another notion we get from novels and plays is that 'falling in love' is something quite irresistable; something that just happens to one, like measles.  And because they believe this, some married people throw up the sponge and give in when they find themselves attracted by a new acquaintance.”

“No doubt, if our minds are fill of novels and plays and sentimental songs, and our bodies full of alcohol, we shall turn any love we feel into that kind of love; just as if you have a rut in your path all the rainwater will run into that rut, and if you wear blue spectacles everything you see will turn blue.  But that will be our own fault.”