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O Peso da Glória
Nos nove sermões que compõem uma de suas obras mais clássicas, O peso da glória, C.S. Lewis demonstra por que é um dos autores cristãos mais influentes da História. Ele é capaz de tratar os mais variados temas de modo brilhante, trazendo simplicidade e clareza a assuntos complexos, instigando tanto nossa alma quanto nosso intelecto.
Agora com edição especial e nova tradução, O peso da glória traz aos leitores contemporâneos as mesmas palavras de inspiração, orientação e apologia da fé cristã que levaram alento a milhares de ouvintes em um tempo recheado de dúvidas.
Agora com edição especial e nova tradução, O peso da glória traz aos leitores contemporâneos as mesmas palavras de inspiração, orientação e apologia da fé cristã que levaram alento a milhares de ouvintes em um tempo recheado de dúvidas.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
2795 people are currently reading
42248 people want to read
About the author
C.S. Lewis
1,000 books47.3k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,892 reviews
July 20, 2016
BOOK #1 FOR BOOKTUBEATHON 2016
This was pretty fantastic! I didn't enjoy it as much as other Lewis books, but you gotta admit that he is super eloquent. He has a way of getting to the heart of things that is unlike any other. The last few essays really hit me hard, and I love him for that.
Will always love CS Lewis
This was pretty fantastic! I didn't enjoy it as much as other Lewis books, but you gotta admit that he is super eloquent. He has a way of getting to the heart of things that is unlike any other. The last few essays really hit me hard, and I love him for that.
Will always love CS Lewis
January 25, 2018
Just great. Also read in November of 1995. Great. Also read in February of 1994. Also read in June of 1981. Listened to the Audible version in February of 2016. Finished listening to it again on Audible in January 2018.
August 23, 2017
"The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point."
I have 44 highlights in the Kindle Book and I reread it regularly. In fact, I try to read at least one CS Lewis book every January to start the year off right. This is one of my favorites. It feels like Lewis and I chatting randomly about life and stuff. Of course, I just sit quietly nodding my head frequently and occasionally sipping my Lake District Pale Ale.
August update: Just listened to this on audio for the first time. I think I prefer this book in writing. The narration was excellent but I think it is too good a book not to highlight. Audio is great for review though and I did read this book twice this year.
I have 44 highlights in the Kindle Book and I reread it regularly. In fact, I try to read at least one CS Lewis book every January to start the year off right. This is one of my favorites. It feels like Lewis and I chatting randomly about life and stuff. Of course, I just sit quietly nodding my head frequently and occasionally sipping my Lake District Pale Ale.
August update: Just listened to this on audio for the first time. I think I prefer this book in writing. The narration was excellent but I think it is too good a book not to highlight. Audio is great for review though and I did read this book twice this year.
September 15, 2024
2024 Review
Next time I am asked to give a graduation speech, I need to remember to start with this volume. So much practical wisdom.
2020 Review
As almost always happens, a re-read brought clarity. Transposition jumped up to one of my favorite essays on this list. Actually, so did Why I'm Not a Pacifist. Such profound, thought-provoking pieces.
And of course, the sermon The Weight of Glory demanded at least two more reads. I'm always discovering more there.
This is one of my favorite pieces of Lewis scholarship, mostly because of how bite-size it is. It is a collection of sermons and speeches given by Lewis and because of that you see some of his most profound thoughts distilled into pages instead of books. I actually listened to it on audio this time round because I was curious to know if it would be more..."real" to hear it as it was originally intended. (As a speech, not as words on a page.) That might explain why I found some of the more complicated essays easier to grasp and appreciate.
Definitely worth picking up, either in print or audio.
2019 Review
Do you ever hear so much about a book that you feel like you've read it already?
That'd be me with The Weight of Glory. I've heard so much about the sermons and essays inside that a part of me was surprised to discover it still unread.
It was marvelous. I read through the titular piece three times before moving on.
Some of it did feel a little over my head. I'm still struggling with the essay on Transposition and Why I Am Not A Pacifist gave me some pause. But I loved The Inner Ring. The concept of the inner ring has been critical to how I view the world since I first discovered it in Lewis's That Hideous Strength. And it was even more delightful to find it here.
The fact that these are essays/sermons makes this an easy one to come back to.
Absolutely wonderful.
Next time I am asked to give a graduation speech, I need to remember to start with this volume. So much practical wisdom.
2020 Review
As almost always happens, a re-read brought clarity. Transposition jumped up to one of my favorite essays on this list. Actually, so did Why I'm Not a Pacifist. Such profound, thought-provoking pieces.
And of course, the sermon The Weight of Glory demanded at least two more reads. I'm always discovering more there.
This is one of my favorite pieces of Lewis scholarship, mostly because of how bite-size it is. It is a collection of sermons and speeches given by Lewis and because of that you see some of his most profound thoughts distilled into pages instead of books. I actually listened to it on audio this time round because I was curious to know if it would be more..."real" to hear it as it was originally intended. (As a speech, not as words on a page.) That might explain why I found some of the more complicated essays easier to grasp and appreciate.
Definitely worth picking up, either in print or audio.
2019 Review
Do you ever hear so much about a book that you feel like you've read it already?
That'd be me with The Weight of Glory. I've heard so much about the sermons and essays inside that a part of me was surprised to discover it still unread.
It was marvelous. I read through the titular piece three times before moving on.
Some of it did feel a little over my head. I'm still struggling with the essay on Transposition and Why I Am Not A Pacifist gave me some pause. But I loved The Inner Ring. The concept of the inner ring has been critical to how I view the world since I first discovered it in Lewis's That Hideous Strength. And it was even more delightful to find it here.
The fact that these are essays/sermons makes this an easy one to come back to.
Absolutely wonderful.
June 16, 2014
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
C.S. Lewis' popularity has died in more recent history. Academics accuse him of being too simplistic in his expression (a few that I have read even go so far as to say that he adds nothing to Christian theology), other readers find his style too wordy, preachy or patronising to fully enjoy. I myself, however, love C.S. Lewis' work much like I love G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R Tolkien. He is enthusiastic, flawed and all so human - bridging a divide between the more intellectual academics and the everyman. Or so I believe anyway.
The one great thing about Lewis' work, is that like Chesterton, he is so quotable. But where Chesterton is a far better wit and academic, Lewis is more laid back and grounded - like a humorous and approachable, if sometimes gruff, Grandad. The reason, therefore, that I believe many intellectuals (particularly atheistic individuals) dismiss Lewis' contribution to Christian apologetics is because he speaks with honesty and straightforwardly. This may sound contradictory, considering the way Lewis conducts his phrases - however it seems clear to me that the way he states his intentions is direct. He's not tactless, yet he does not hide his sentences in tact (if that makes any particular sense). To the intellectual who prefers greater nuance and ideas that they can make their own, there is little for them in Lewis' work.
"Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairytales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years."
I would define Lewis as a Christian philosopher in his own way. After all, philosophy is all about critical thought, and Lewis is nothing if not critical - again perhaps a reason for his loss of popularity is that he attacks established intellectual institutions within his thoughts. Yet he is more a philosopher of apologetics - if such a role ever has existed.
"...it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased."
Yet, for most of this review I have merely been defending C.S. Lewis, not addressing this actual work of his. I will say that if you like Lewis, this is one of the better works of his that I have read. His address on The Weight of Glory is one of the finer pieces that he ever composed, I would argue, and many of the other pieces address similarly interesting and complex issues from the idea of unity, peace and scientific logic v. God. I will have to see how Mere Christianity stands up next to this.
For now I will state this in closing. I believe that C.S. Lewis is someone who should be read by anyone who reads philosophy or books of faith - works that address the idea of Human Nature and the mind or soul. Lewis is by far one of the most down-to-earth and confrontationally direct of all the writers I have tried (in many ways he is the direct opposite of Nietzsche) but he is still one of the more appealing to me. I will never cease to find it of more interest that he came from critical and intellectual atheism to critical and intellectual faith - proving that Christianity need not be faith without thought.
"Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
November 20, 2016
I’m recording The Weight of Glory as ‘read’ now, but actually I first encountered this marvelous essay years ago. It has been part of me for so long I don’t even remember when I first heard about it or haven't had it in my storehouse of “essential documents”. It might even have been my introduction to the immortal Lewis; for better or worse I wasn’t raised on the Narnia chronicles.
The quote, ‘We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased’ has long been one of my all-time favorites, although it was years before I knew its context.
To me this is a magnificent piece of work which speaks to the grandeur—indeed the glory—offered to humanity to live up to the potential which God intended for us. The ‘weight’ is in contemplating the woe if we do not.
Six stars if I could. You can read it online here.
The quote, ‘We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased’ has long been one of my all-time favorites, although it was years before I knew its context.
To me this is a magnificent piece of work which speaks to the grandeur—indeed the glory—offered to humanity to live up to the potential which God intended for us. The ‘weight’ is in contemplating the woe if we do not.
Six stars if I could. You can read it online here.
February 9, 2024
The importance of rereading cannot be understated. We truly are different people each read. My perspective each reading is enlarged. (January 29, 2019)
I seem to be reading this every five years. I will change that! It’s so good!
I seem to be reading this every five years. I will change that! It’s so good!
February 10, 2018
This book made my reread list. I love his eloquence. He often presents powerful messages in a gentle way. That is a gift.
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I've read different C.S. Lewis books over the years. He is the most often quoted author in Christian religion. This book, however, is my favorite so far. I LOVED this book. It makes me want to be better and to do better. It was eloquently written without the fire and brimstone speech.
Sometimes books like this, tend to make the reader point the finger at those around them who aren't living up to their professed standards without looking into their own hearts. With this book, I don't know how one could possibly do that. It was gently stated.
--------------------------------------------------------
I've read different C.S. Lewis books over the years. He is the most often quoted author in Christian religion. This book, however, is my favorite so far. I LOVED this book. It makes me want to be better and to do better. It was eloquently written without the fire and brimstone speech.
Sometimes books like this, tend to make the reader point the finger at those around them who aren't living up to their professed standards without looking into their own hearts. With this book, I don't know how one could possibly do that. It was gently stated.
Want to read
September 19, 2023I read "The Weight of Glory" sermon here (Feb. 22, 2014). Can't believe it took me this far along in my life to read it. Read it a second time on Jan. 14, 2018. Dr. Richard Russell covered these first two essays in our CE class at church, before he got into The Great Divorce.
I taught "The Weight of Glory" regularly from 2018–2023, and I got to give a presentation on it in Jan. 2019. The sermon turned 80 in 2021.
Read "Learning in War-Time" for the first time on Jan. 13, 2018. I began teaching it on a regular basis in 2023.
Read "The Inner Ring" for the first time in Oct. 2018 (taught it at Regent for several years).
Read "Membership" on Sept. 19, 2023.
I taught "The Weight of Glory" regularly from 2018–2023, and I got to give a presentation on it in Jan. 2019. The sermon turned 80 in 2021.
Read "Learning in War-Time" for the first time on Jan. 13, 2018. I began teaching it on a regular basis in 2023.
Read "The Inner Ring" for the first time in Oct. 2018 (taught it at Regent for several years).
Read "Membership" on Sept. 19, 2023.
July 30, 2025
2025: Please read this. It is nine essays. I just reread it in 3 hours. You may not agree with all of it, but you cannot help but be challenged and changed. I love this book dearly. And I needed, this time, to hear what Lewis has to say about the desire for glory not being misguided, but rather so paltry in comparison to the real glory coming.
I intend to reread 'Why I Am Not a Pacifist' soon. Its standards for moral conviction are very helpful.
I think Lewis' view of Genesis and the OT would be pretty shocking to many a modern evangelical Christian, but it might help me through my working out of what I believe about creation and evolution while also maintaining a high view of biblical inerrancy. (Man I want Adam and Eve to be historical though...)
And I'm in a period of re-understanding hell and what it means. I don't like it. But I am a Christian by God's grace, and I want to live like I am, so I must think about what hell means. And Lewis is helping.
Quotes //
The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire...Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a day at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.
We do not want merely to see beauty... [but] to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons.
A man may have to die for his country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
As though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootbacks... The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God.
The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
You cannot do simply good to simply Man; you must do this or that good to this or that man... To avert or postpone one particular war... is more useful than all the proposals for universal peace that have ever been made.
[Our faith] sets us face relentlessly against our natural individualism; on the other hand, it gives back to those who abandon individualism an eternal possession of their own personal being, even of their bodies.
Only God can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don't mean that I can therefore, as they say, 'sit back.' What God does for us, He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the repeated exercises of my own will... We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance... Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere.
In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness... We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
// Thank you, C.S. Lewis. In no small part you are the reason I have remained a Christian and an academic. All glory to Him who made you & me and put your books in my hands. In the new Jerusalem next year!
Signed, an aspiring renaissance woman, Orual.
I intend to reread 'Why I Am Not a Pacifist' soon. Its standards for moral conviction are very helpful.
I think Lewis' view of Genesis and the OT would be pretty shocking to many a modern evangelical Christian, but it might help me through my working out of what I believe about creation and evolution while also maintaining a high view of biblical inerrancy. (Man I want Adam and Eve to be historical though...)
And I'm in a period of re-understanding hell and what it means. I don't like it. But I am a Christian by God's grace, and I want to live like I am, so I must think about what hell means. And Lewis is helping.
Quotes //
The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire...Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a day at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.
We do not want merely to see beauty... [but] to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons.
A man may have to die for his country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
As though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootbacks... The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God.
The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
You cannot do simply good to simply Man; you must do this or that good to this or that man... To avert or postpone one particular war... is more useful than all the proposals for universal peace that have ever been made.
[Our faith] sets us face relentlessly against our natural individualism; on the other hand, it gives back to those who abandon individualism an eternal possession of their own personal being, even of their bodies.
Only God can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don't mean that I can therefore, as they say, 'sit back.' What God does for us, He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the repeated exercises of my own will... We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance... Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere.
In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness... We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
// Thank you, C.S. Lewis. In no small part you are the reason I have remained a Christian and an academic. All glory to Him who made you & me and put your books in my hands. In the new Jerusalem next year!
Signed, an aspiring renaissance woman, Orual.
December 30, 2022
It's been a while since I'd last read Lewis--and this book did not disappoint! The titular essay was easily my favorite of the lot. But his reflections on pacifism and what makes live worth living were also superb--and there were a number of great insights in the other essays as well. Leaves you with a lot of food for thought.
Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).
Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).
March 27, 2008
One of Lewis's most brilliant, the title essay in this collection will blow you away with its rationale for pre-earth life, our longing to be recognized by God, and the remarkable practicality of the ending: it has the biggest 'so what?' I've ever read, and all the groundwork he lays throughout the essay makes the crescendo and climax, solid and unarguable.
"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations . . . There are no ordinary people. you have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. and our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat--the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
I was just going to quote a couple of lines there, but you see how remarkable it is!
"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations . . . There are no ordinary people. you have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. and our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat--the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
I was just going to quote a couple of lines there, but you see how remarkable it is!
February 14, 2013
A great collection of essays and papers delivered to students during the 1940's. Lewis never ceases to inspire me with his prose. He's simply a great writer. But that's not all he is. He is a great thinker and teacher too. For instance, in the beginning of his piece called "Why I'm not a pacifist" he takes the time to educate his readers/listeners on the art of logical thinking. This is one example of how he teaches beyond the bounds of his topic. This book was a joy to read. That being said, I realized while reading the chapter "Is Theology Poetry?" that he holds some beliefs with which I strongly disagree--namely that much of the OT is mythical and becomes more historical as it approaches the NT. I do wonder if he would hold this opinion today if he were still alive. Still, these minor discrepancies are not so unforgivable (or so prolonged) as to decrease my enjoyment of this book. And, heck, you shouldn't swallow everything you read whole anyway.
I really do get the impression that we could have enjoyed some wonderful discussions, if I could have had the opportunity. That's the way his writing makes me feel. Conversational, learned, and thought provoking.
I really do get the impression that we could have enjoyed some wonderful discussions, if I could have had the opportunity. That's the way his writing makes me feel. Conversational, learned, and thought provoking.
July 5, 2025
new runner up for favorite Lewis work
January 25, 2016
Wow. Just wow.
That's the feeling I always get after finishing one of C.S. Lewis's works; Mere Christianity was the same way for me. It's the feeling of, "well, that was that, and it was perfect, and there's nothing more I can even say".
Read this beautiful, thought-provoking book. It'll challenge you, convict you, and help you view the world-- and the Lord-- in light of eternity.
I underlined and marked so many quotes in this book, but these are a few of my favorites:
"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
That's the feeling I always get after finishing one of C.S. Lewis's works; Mere Christianity was the same way for me. It's the feeling of, "well, that was that, and it was perfect, and there's nothing more I can even say".
Read this beautiful, thought-provoking book. It'll challenge you, convict you, and help you view the world-- and the Lord-- in light of eternity.
I underlined and marked so many quotes in this book, but these are a few of my favorites:
"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
April 3, 2024
Another absolute ✨ masterpiece ✨ by CS Lewis that has helped me see more of what my faith believes as well as my own personal convictions.
~Favourite Quotes~
"For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, acknowledgement, and the welcome into the heart of things."
"By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted."
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
"Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord'."
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
"Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality."
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
"If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead."
"What God does for us, He does in us."
~Happy Reading~
~Favourite Quotes~
"For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, acknowledgement, and the welcome into the heart of things."
"By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted."
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
"Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord'."
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
"Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality."
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
"If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead."
"What God does for us, He does in us."
~Happy Reading~
December 11, 2018
C.S. Lewis's Weight of Glory is just wonderful. His writing style is breezy and flows perfectly. His ideas about glory too are really inspiration and thought provoking.
And the edition I was reading this in. Floppy paperback and deckle edged! Um yES.
And the edition I was reading this in. Floppy paperback and deckle edged! Um yES.
April 8, 2022
2022: Second time through this (this year as a part of my read through all of CS Lewis’s major works) and I was equally as amazed as I was the first time. There are so many good chapters here. My favorites are obviously the first chapter Weight of Glory, chapter 2 Learning in Wartime, chapter 6 The Inner Ring and chapter 7 Membership. In many ways Lewis is writing more to our current cultural crisis than he was to his. At least that’s the way it seems to me. I think (as with God in the Dock) someone should just start publishing these chapters (save for Weight of Glory because everyone knows quotes from that) in a modern Christian blog or magazine and not list who the author is and I am sure many commenters would be saying “this man gets our culture” or “what a 21st century voice for Christians this man is” and all the while it is Lewis who wrote these around 75 years ago!!! Amazing! Highest recommendation again!
2021 review: Simply amazing! I had quoted the first chapter dozens of times but now I have read the whole thing and it just as spectacular as that first chapter!! Highest recommendation!
2021 review: Simply amazing! I had quoted the first chapter dozens of times but now I have read the whole thing and it just as spectacular as that first chapter!! Highest recommendation!
November 2, 2022
Finally completed my first Lewis book (non-fiction, I've read his fiction before)!
I loved his way of cutting out all the unnecessary and getting straight to the heart and often painful truths. His writing was a little hard to follow at times and one or two chapters went over my head but overall I loved it and was underlining a bunch of quotes!
I loved his way of cutting out all the unnecessary and getting straight to the heart and often painful truths. His writing was a little hard to follow at times and one or two chapters went over my head but overall I loved it and was underlining a bunch of quotes!
October 17, 2020
2020. I love this book. I'm so glad I picked it up again, it was good for me.
2016. Wonderful.
2016. Wonderful.
January 13, 2021
Another awesome group of essays. Some of his famous quotes are in here. Always fun when I stumble upon bits and pieces of Lewis with which I disagree. There’s a bit of overlap between this and God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. This one definitely deserves a reread in print. I’ll write a proper review someday.
March 14, 2025
O altă compilație de predici/esee, câteva coincid cu cele adunate în volumul "Ferigi și Elefanți" de Humanitas.
1."The Weight of Glory" - Despre "slava" viitoare
2."Learning in war-time" - Exact ce spune titlul
3."Why I'm not a Pacifist" - Bine și rău
4."Transposition" - Transpunerea spiritualului în fizic
5."Is Theology Poetry?" - Poezie vs. Teologie
6."The Inner Ring"- Elitism social
7."Membership" - Ce înseamnă să fii "membru"
8."On forgivness" - Scuzare vs. iertare
9."A slip of the tongue" - Egoism în iertare
Cele mai de impact pentru mine: 1,4,6,7
1."The Weight of Glory" - Despre "slava" viitoare
2."Learning in war-time" - Exact ce spune titlul
3."Why I'm not a Pacifist" - Bine și rău
4."Transposition" - Transpunerea spiritualului în fizic
5."Is Theology Poetry?" - Poezie vs. Teologie
6."The Inner Ring"- Elitism social
7."Membership" - Ce înseamnă să fii "membru"
8."On forgivness" - Scuzare vs. iertare
9."A slip of the tongue" - Egoism în iertare
Cele mai de impact pentru mine: 1,4,6,7
Read
August 1, 2025Not intending to finish the collection. The first essay “The Weight of Glory” is probably Lewis’ finest rhetorical accomplishment and the closest thing we have to a 20th century continuation of the homiletical tradition of the fathers, but the other essays are vastly inferior in quality.
N.B. Walter Hooper’s introduction to this revised edition is truly heartwarming.
N.B. Walter Hooper’s introduction to this revised edition is truly heartwarming.
May 24, 2023
As always with C.S. Lewis and his writings, my brain cannot compute all the wisdom he has to drop so this will have to be a reread in the future. I really enjoyed his essay on “Why I’m Not a Pacifist.”
As the kids say, C.S. Lewis has got the rizz.
As the kids say, C.S. Lewis has got the rizz.
August 21, 2022
I haven’t read very many books more than once, but this one definitely deserves frequent rereads. The problem is that so much of my copy is already highlighted, I now have to highlight the highlights.
The book is a collection of essays— most were actually talks or sermons that he delivered between 1941 and 1956. In addition to the famous title sermon, which is vintage Lewis, he also expounds on topics such as the trouble with pacifism, the importance of forgiveness, the seductive desire to be a part of the “inner ring,” the true meaning of membership, and the deficiencies of the “scientific outlook” (materialism).
Some of CSL’s most memorable quotes are from this book. I’m just going to go ahead and stockpile some of my favorites here so I can easily find them later:
The book is a collection of essays— most were actually talks or sermons that he delivered between 1941 and 1956. In addition to the famous title sermon, which is vintage Lewis, he also expounds on topics such as the trouble with pacifism, the importance of forgiveness, the seductive desire to be a part of the “inner ring,” the true meaning of membership, and the deficiencies of the “scientific outlook” (materialism).
Some of CSL’s most memorable quotes are from this book. I’m just going to go ahead and stockpile some of my favorites here so I can easily find them later:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
(The Weight of Glory)
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor‘s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
[…]
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
[…]
And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat [truly hides]– the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
(The Weight of Glory)
For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
(Is Theology Poetry?)
It may be asked whether, faint as the hope is of abolishing war by Pacifism, there is any other hope. But the question belongs to a mode of thought which I find quite alien to me. It consists in assuming that the great permanent misery in human life must be curable if only we can find the right cure; and it then proceeds by elimination and concludes that whatever is left, however unlikely to prove a cure, must nevertheless do so. Hence the fanaticism of Marxists, Freudians, Eugenicists, Spiritualists, Douglasites, Federal Unionists, Vegetarians and all the rest. But I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well we can.
(Why I Am Not a Pacifist)
March 13, 2025
Perfectly curated collection of essays. The first essay alone (The Weight of Glory) is worth the price of admission; my favorite piece of Lewis' writing I've ever read.
October 4, 2022
Good stuff.
Presumably no one wants to listen to a too-long, roughly-edited, Weight of Glory-inspired conversation between two girls who do not yet know what they’re doing when it comes to technology (or talking to microphones)…but in case anyone does have a very long drive or a lot of dishes to wash or laundry to fold, here’s a link to a friend’s and my podcast episode on this book: https:// open. spotify. com/ episode/1l5rrAjg2CAauIYGXmJlWn?si=oVoXGCkFRwq3EN9ZhCnyQg (and just take out the spaces since Goodreads and links love each other not)
Presumably no one wants to listen to a too-long, roughly-edited, Weight of Glory-inspired conversation between two girls who do not yet know what they’re doing when it comes to technology (or talking to microphones)…but in case anyone does have a very long drive or a lot of dishes to wash or laundry to fold, here’s a link to a friend’s and my podcast episode on this book: https:// open. spotify. com/ episode/1l5rrAjg2CAauIYGXmJlWn?si=oVoXGCkFRwq3EN9ZhCnyQg (and just take out the spaces since Goodreads and links love each other not)
May 10, 2022
It was a great joy to re-read this amazing book again by C .S. Lewis. It brought back a good memory of reading The Weight of Glory inside St. Mary The Virgin Church in Oxford, England. My favorite essay from this book is, Is Theology Poetry?
April 29, 2022
It has been quite a while since I have re-read this amazing book by C. S. Lewis. I look forward to writing a review once I am finished.
October 9, 2025
"The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God ... to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness ...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father a son-it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."
Shakespeare weeps in the presence of CS Lewis.
Praise God.
Shakespeare weeps in the presence of CS Lewis.
Praise God.
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