lesser known words from clive staples

“I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, ‘WE’, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious ‘US”. WE are apparently perfect and blameless. Don’t you believe it.”

“As the only two good lines in one of our bad hymns says ‘Fear Him ye saints and you will have nothing else to fear’…Not all the things you fear can happen to you; the one (if any) that does will perhaps turn out very differently from what you think.”

“People in real life are often so preposterous that one would not dare to put them in a novel.”

“What a state we have got into when we can’t say “I’ll be happy when God calls me” without being afraid one will be thought ‘morbid.' After all, Paul said just the same. If we really believe what we say we believe—if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home’, why should we not look forward to the arrival?…”

“There, by the way, is a sentence ending with a preposition. The silly ‘rule’ against it was invented by Dryden. I think he disliked it only because you can’t do it in either French or Latin which he thought more ‘polite’ languages than English.”
{i stand humbled and corrected. ;) }

"Humans are seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often themselves quite mistaken as to what their motives are."

“I have a notion that, apart from actual pain, men and women are quite diversely affected by illness. To a woman one of the great evils about it is that she can’t do things. To a man {or anyway a man like me} the great consolation is the reflection ‘Well, anyway, no one can now demand that I should do anything.’ ”