SCREWTAPE
Lately, I have seen many references to the Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. In 1963, at age 64, he died. Among other accomplishments, Lewis wrote 37 books. How did he know all of this in 1941. A site listed 179 best quotes from the book. Here are my choices.
“She’s the type of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.
It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
Suspicion often creates what it suspects.
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern. (from the preface)
When He (God) talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that,. He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they were wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.
Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.
The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal past of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.
Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out…
It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
