Nick > Nick's Quotes

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“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.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“[A]ll that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
― C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“When he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realized that while his lips had been saying 'Oh Lord, make me chaste,' his heart had been secretly adding, 'But please don't do it just yet.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity