C S Lewis Screwtape Quotes & Sayings

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off. — C.S. Lewis

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth. — C.S. Lewis

Sometimes the truth don't rhyme — Chance The Rapper

She wasn't a cruel Bird. But her heart ached so badly for these sad, broken birds that, just as the Puppeteer had planned, she had begun to hate them. She hated them for making her feel so wretched, when she should be happiest. That happens sometimes. — Katherine Catmull

The master demon Screwtape identifies elitist humanity's tendency toward an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men. — C.S. Lewis

SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds, Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness ... — Jonathan Safran Foer

Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. — C.S. Lewis

I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d'Albon's chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. — Dorothy Dunnett

I have finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book. — Stephen Chbosky

It's the sort of absurd notion, though, that I wouldn't mind taking out for a good academic run someday. — J.D. Salinger

The point is ... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world. — Thomas Nagel

Guessing right for the wrong reason does not merit scientific immortality. — Stephen Jay Gould

Prosperity knits a man to the world. — C.S. Lewis

For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people. — Craig Venter

I think sometimes when we grew up with a parent who is deeply flawed ... we learn, subconsciously at least, to expect the worst from everyone else as well ... Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way forever. We can learn to see with new eyes if we try. — Mindy Starns Clark

Women must find their own answer. That's the important thing. I'm no longer interested in books about women written by men. Even if I could believe in their objectivity, I just can't find their opinions relevant. Now I will only believe what a woman has to say about women, because even if it's not entirely true, it's her struggle and she's on the way to the answer.
Many of you seek masculine approval. Even though you have inside you your way of talking and writing, you have mountains of it inside you, and even though it is enough to begin expressing yourselves so long as it is with your vocabulary, your abstractions, and your own conceptualization, I think you are still afraid of the master: men. Of their judgment. As long as you have this fear, you will not progress. I think the future belongs to women. Men have been completely dethroned. Their rhetoric is stale, used up. We must move on the rhetoric of women, one that is anchored in the organism, in the body. — Marguerite Duras

But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last. — Mary Oliver

The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. — C.S. Lewis

By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? — C.S. Lewis

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts, ... Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape. — C.S. Lewis

If you let your man-made actions to be more frequent than your man-said words you will travail with praise in man-win visions. Do more, say less, win big. — Israelmore Ayivor

Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. — Victor Hugo

It's difficult to see how Syria can have any long-term future with Assad there as president. Many people would never return to that country if that were the case. — George Osborne

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure they are always very 'spiritual', that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. — C.S. Lewis

Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by
which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. - Screwtape — C.S. Lewis

The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there's a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under. — C.S. Lewis