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Austenn Akers
https://substack.com/@austennakers
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”
― Mere Christianity
― Mere Christianity
“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.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
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“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― Mere Christianity
― Mere Christianity
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― Mere Christianity
― Mere Christianity
The Inklings
— 528 members
— last activity Jan 31, 2026 09:09AM
The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, between the 1930s and the 1960s. Its most re ...more
J.R.R. Tolkien
— 3847 members
— last activity Dec 26, 2025 03:51AM
Discussion, recommendations, and all-over appreciation for Britain's own myth maker, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. ...more
Austenn’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Austenn’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
377 books
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57 friends
632 books
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47 friends
2,034 books
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15 friends
313 books
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42 friends
876 books
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43 friends
133 books
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47 friends
169 books
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303 friends
92 books
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53 friends
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