4. Proper Use of Objects
The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is—what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.
A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’, ch. 1
One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as ‘intemperate’ as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridgemania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.
Mere Christianity, bk 3, ch. 2
If we encourage others, or ourselves, to hear, see, or read great art on the ground that it is a cultured thing to do, we call into play precisely those elements in us which must be in abeyance before we can enjoy art at all. We are calling up the desire for self-improvement, the desire for distinction, the desire to revolt (from one group) and to agree (with another), and a dozen busy passions which, whether good or bad in themselves, are, in relation to the arts, simply a blinding and paralysing distraction. . . .
Those who read poetry to improve their minds will never improve their minds by reading poetry. For the true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end.
The World’s Last Night, ch. 3
In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.
Mere Christianity, bk 1, ch. 5
The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
Surprised by Joy, ch. 7
We no more become bad by thinking of badness than we become triangular by thinking about triangles.
A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’, ch. 12
Games are essentially for pleasure, but they happen to produce health. They are not likely, however, to produce health if they are played for the sake of it.
‘Our English Syllabus’, Image and Imagination
We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism—the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good. But we have hardly yet begun what may be called Hedonics, the science or philosophy of Pleasure.
‘Hedonics’, Present Concerns
The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. . . . Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. . . . You can get second things only by putting first things first. . . .
It is impossible, in this context, not to inquire what our own civilisation has been putting first for the last thirty years. And the answer is plain. It has been putting itself first. To preserve civilisation has been the great aim; the collapse of civilisation, the great bugbear. Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement—all these, which are what we usually mean by civilisation, have been our ends. . . . How if civilisation has been imperilled precisely by the fact that we have made civilisation our summum bonum. . . . Perhaps civilisation will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.
‘First and Second Things’, God in the Dock
Many things—such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly—are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ch. 9, sec. 3
Conquest is an evil productive of almost every other evil both to those who commit and to those who suffer it.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ch. 9, sec. 1
What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.
Surprised by Joy, ch. 11
A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt.
‘A Reply to Professor Haldane’, Of Other Worlds
If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation, compared with his, is only a moment.
Mere Christianity, bk 3, ch. 1
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. . . .
Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.
A Grief Observed, ch. 4