Anglicans From The United Kingdom

"I suspect that the single most important gift of progress to conservation has been the development of human contraception techniques."

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."

"If the world pollution situation is not critical at the moment, it is as certain as anything can be that the situation will become increasingly intolerable within a very short time. The situation can be controlled, and even reversed; but it demands cooperation on a scale and intensity beyond anything achieved so far. I realize that there are vital causes to be fought for, and I sympathize with people who work up a passionate concern about the all too many examples of inhumanity, injustice, and unfairness; but behind all this hangs a deadly cloud. Still largely unnoticed and unrecognized, the process of destroying our natural environment is gathering speed and momentum. If we fail to cope with the challenge, the other problems will pale into insignificance."

"There may be disagreements about the time scale, but in principle there can be little doubt that the population cannot go on increasing indefinitely. Resources presently being used will not last for ever and pollution in its broadest sense, unless severely checked, is bound to increase with population and industrial activity."

"A new criterion has been added, the conservation of the environment so that in the long run life, including human life, can continue. This new consideration must be taken into account at all levels and in all departments of government and in the boardrooms of every industrial enterprise. It is no longer sufficient simply to quantify the elements of existence as in old-fashioned material economics; conservation means taking notice of the quality of existence as well... The problem is of course to give some value to that quality and perhaps the only way to do this is to try and work out the cost in terms of loss of amenities, loss of holiday and recreation facilities, loss of property values, loss of contact with nature, loss of health standards and loss of food resources, if proper conservation methods are not used. Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run... The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth."

"It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now."

"It is frequently more rewarding merely to ask pertinent questions. It may get someone to go and look for an answer. If you get a silly answer, which can easily happen, you can return to the charge with even more telling effect. Whatever happens, don't give up and don't despair. Results may not be immediately apparent, but you may have touched a receptive chord without knowing it. Even the most unsympathetic and unenlightened politician, industrialist or bureaucrat begins to take notice when a lot of people write about the same subject."

"If we are to exercise our responsibilities so that all life can continue on earth, they must have a moral and philosophical basis. Simple self-interest, economic profit and absolute materialism are no longer enough... It has been made perfectly clear that a concern for any part of life on this planet — human, plant or animal, wild or tame — is a concern for all life. A threat to any part of the environment is a threat to the whole environment, but we must have a basis of assessment of these threats, not so that we can establish a priority of fears, but so that we can make a positive contribution to improvement and ultimate survival."

"My father, for I suppose the last 70 years, has given the most remarkable devoted service to the queen, to my family, to the country and also to the whole of the Commonwealth."

"Then we go back to the Duke of Edinburgh; I recall an amazingly ridiculous campaign against him because, on a visit to India, he was invited to go tiger-shooting (such an invitation is a great honour there) and after a few days of the newspapers back home yelling and screaming and jumping up and down, he had to pretend that he had a whitlow on his trigger-finger and so couldn't shoot anything, not even a tabloid journalist."

"'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?"

"As poacher turned gamekeeper, C.S. Lewis found himself having to drill students in the elements of Old English philology."

"You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there's no such thing as creative writing. I've always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That's our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can't say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” What nonsense! I'm given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me."

"The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not "influence" as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my "stuff" could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion."

"So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots."

"As C. S. Lewis said to me long ago, more or less – (I do not suppose my memory of his dicta is any more precisely accurate than his of mine: I often find strange things attributed to me in his works) – 'if they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious'."

"[I]t was the religious writing of that High Anglican C.S. Lewis which had most impact upon my intellectual religious formation. The power of his broadcasts, sermons and essays came from a combination of simple language with theological depth. Who has ever portrayed more wittily and convincingly the way in which Evil works on our human weaknesses than he did in The Screwtape Letters? Who has ever made more accessible the profound concepts of Natural Law than he did in The Abolition of Man and in the opening passages of Mere Christianity? I remember most clearly the impact on me of Christian Behaviour (republished in Mere Christianity, but originally appearing as radio talks). This went to the heart of the appalling disparity between the way in which we Christians behave and the ideals we profess."

"(What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?) the writers that meant most to me: ... C. S. Lewis above all."

"I am an atheist and I always have been; I have a great deal of trouble with C. S. Lewis, with the way his mind works. I don't really know what he's talking about. I admire the first book of his trilogy, as a novel. He was one of the first writers to invent alien creatures who were truly alien and truly sympathetic. I think those Martians of his are magnificent. And the second two books of his trilogy I consider an abomination, because he started preaching. I do not like to preach, or be preached at."

"Mr. Lewis possesses the rare gift of being able to make righteousness readable."

"I once asked how he managed to write with such ease, and I think his answer tells us more about his writing than anything else he said. He told me that the thing he loved most about writing was that it did two things at once. This he illustrated by saying: "I don't know what I mean till I see what I've said.""

"far as I can recall, Lewis and I met only once. The encounter took place at Oxford in the well-known pub, the Eastgate. I was accompanied by my fellow Interplanetarian, Val Cleaver, and Lewis brought along a friend whose name I didn't catch. Needless to say, neither side converted the other, and we refused to abandon our diabolical schemes of interplanetary conquest. But a fine time was had by all, and when, some hours later, we emerged a little unsteadily from the Eastgate, Dr. Lewis' parting words were "I'm sure you're wicked people—but how dull it would be if everyone was good". C. S. Lewis's friend? It was another Oxford don, one J. R. R. Tolkien, who I met again some years later [...]"

"Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work."

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career."

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

"The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked."

"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn."

"You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream."

"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn."

"If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly."

"The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity."

"To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of "normality" hatched in a Viennese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I have grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success-who cares whether this is called Punishment or not?"

"As image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul."

"The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements."

"If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons."

"The standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our minds and it is against that standard that we must test all contemporary thought. In fact, we must at all costs not move with the times."

"I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is — what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course..."

"The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies."

"I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles."

"The process of being brought up, however well it is done, cannot fail to offend."

"“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”"

"What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard."

"It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one."

"When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'"

"Not my idea of God, but God."

"But then again of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all."

"I need Christ, not something that resembles Him."

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask — half our great theological and metaphysical problems — are like that."