Favorite Quotes from "The Weight of Glory"

I recently read a collection of essays and speeches from C. S. Lewis entitled The Weight of Glory.  Really "The Weight of Glory" is simply the first essay in a rather random collection and the book is named after it.  That being said I want to share a few of my favorite quotes from the book.

From "The Weight of Glory"
"... it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who want 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."

"... to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son... it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.  But so it is."

"... God makes no appetite in vain."

From "Why I Am Not a Pacifist
About why reason must be used.  "The man who 'just feels' that total abstinence from drink or marriage is obligatory is to be treated like the man who 'just feels sure' that Henry VIII is not by Shakespeare or that vaccination does no good."

From "Transposition"
"We can hope only for what we can desire."

Concerning our heavenly bodies.  "'We know not what we shall be'; but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, that we were on earth."

From "Is Theology Poetry?"

"... if Theology is Poetry, it is not very good poetry."

"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."

From "The Inner Ring"
"... attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice but of all vices."

"Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain."

From "Membership"
"... the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion."

"The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine.  God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him...  He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is love... If there is equality, it is in His love, not is us."

"The structural position in the Church which the humblest Christian occupies is eternal and even cosmic.  The Church will outlive the universe; in it the individual person will outlive the universe."

From "On Forgiveness"
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

From "A Slip of the Tongue"

"'Have we never risen from our knees in haste for fear God's will should become too unmistakable if we prayed longer?'"

"When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death.  Therefore, in love, He claims all.  There's no bargaining with Him."

"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."


These are a few favorite quotes from The Weight of Glory; I hope you take time to read one of these essays in their entirety today.