#since

One reason why the Enemy found this so easy was that, without knowing it, I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion; and that for a reason worth recording. By a sheer mistake - and I still believe it to have been an honest mistake - in spiritual technique I had rendered my private practice of that religion a quiet intolerable burden. It came about in this way. Like everyone else I had been told as a child that one must not only say one's prayers but think about what one was saying. Accordingly, when I came to a serious belief, I tried to put this into practice. At first it seemed plain sailing. But soon the false conscience (St. Paul's 'Law', Herbert's 'prattler') came into play. One had no sooner reached 'Amen' than it whispered, 'Yes. But are you sure you were really thinking about what you said?'; then, more subtly, 'Were you, for example, thinking about it as well as you did last night?' The answer, for reasons I did not then understand, was nearly always No. 'Very well,' said the voice, 'hadn't you, then, better try it over again?' And one obeyed; but of course with no assurance that the second attempt would be any better...I set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a 'realization,' by which I meant a certain vivedness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce, which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred, and which, even when it did occur, was of very mediocre spiritual value. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#belief #prayer #satan #sincerity #imagination

I express myself in sculpture since I am not a poet. ↗

— Aristide Maillol

#express #i #i am #myself #poet

Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it. ↗

— Whitey Herzog

#been #good #i #i quit #me

Since I was eight years old. I didn't have a TV, so comic books were definitely my television, my soap operas, and all that. ↗

— Method Man

#comic #comic books #definitely #eight #i

There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way. ↗

— Ernest Mandel

#certain #hardly #important #important way #participated

Ever since I was a little girl, I always loved fashion. I would watch my mother get dressed and suggest things she should wear. ↗

— Monique Lhuillier

#dressed #ever #fashion #get #girl

There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life. ↗

— Joseph Barber Lightfoot

#heart #life #more #sincere #single

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. ↗

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#alone #believe #everyone #i #i do

I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really. ↗

— Steven Patrick Morrissey

#been #british #had #i #intently

Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome. ↗

— John Lothrop Motley

#already #been #crown #fall #first