The Weight of Glory

Excerpts from The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis


"Learning in War-Time"

If you don't read good books, you will read bad ones. If you don't go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions, you will fall into sensual satisfactions. (p52)

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All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not. (p54)

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I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious—as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootblacks. I think it was Matthew Arnold who first used the English word spiritual in the sense of the German geistlich, and so inaugurated this most dangerous and most anti-Christian error. Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord." This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow. We are members of one body, but differentiated members, each with his own vocation. (p55)

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Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. (p58)

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The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come. (p60)

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A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God's hands. (p61)

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It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received. (p61)


"Membership"

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship. (p160)

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I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. (p168)

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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. (p170)

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No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. (p175)