A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Understanding the depth of life's experiences allows one to grasp the true significance of death.
C. S. Lewis suggests that only someone who has fully engaged with the experiences and emotions of human life can truly appreciate the weight and horror that death brings. This perspective emphasizes the importance of living a rich, authentic life to comprehend the finality and fear associated with mortality.
Themes
LifeDeathHuman ExperienceMortalityExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech to inspire students to live life to the fullest.
More from C. S. Lewis
All quotes βI enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
C. S. LewisRead
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. LewisRead
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
C. S. LewisRead
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
C. S. LewisRead
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
C. S. LewisRead
Similar quotes
Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.
D. A. CarsonRead
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
Frederick DouglassRead
Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world.
Abraham MaslowRead
Everything happens kind of the way it's supposed to happen, and we just watch it unfold. And you can't control it. Looking back, you can't say, "I should've..." You didn't, and had you, the outcome would have been different.
Rick RubinRead
Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.
Bell HooksRead