My History of Philosophy 1 class just read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. This book is definitely in my top 5 of all time, and Lewis' Augustinian roots are on fully display in this book. Here are some of my favorite quotes. The page numbers are from the 1996 Touchstone edition.
p.67 – “Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”
p.68 – “That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
p.72 – “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”
p. 74 – “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly nothing.”
p.78 – “Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.”
p.80 – “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about him.”
p.91 – “You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.”
p.92 – “No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”
p.95 – “There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”
p.96 – “Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.”
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”
p.102 – “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”
p.110-111 – “What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you…We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”
p.118 – “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
p.119 – “[The action of Pity] leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”
p.120 – “All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world; but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.”
p.67 – “Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”
p.68 – “That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
p.72 – “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”
p. 74 – “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly nothing.”
p.78 – “Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.”
p.80 – “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about him.”
p.91 – “You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.”
p.92 – “No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”
p.95 – “There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”
p.96 – “Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.”
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”
p.102 – “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”
p.110-111 – “What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you…We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”
p.118 – “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
p.119 – “[The action of Pity] leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”
p.120 – “All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world; but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.”
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