Friday 7 May 2010
Saturday 1 May 2010
C.S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy
I've been reading a lot of Lewis lately. If you haven't come across him, or if there is anything by him you have not yet read, I strongly suggest that you attempt to get him as high on your reading priority as you possibly can.
Here are two quotes - they are quite long, but do give them the time, they are worth it.
"We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I talk of a 'normal' day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought to me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for man does not want to drink alone, and if you meet a friend in the tap-room the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the out-door world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned ...... The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four ...... At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies...there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven."
"Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and that fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand."
Genius.
Here are two quotes - they are quite long, but do give them the time, they are worth it.
"We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I talk of a 'normal' day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought to me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for man does not want to drink alone, and if you meet a friend in the tap-room the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the out-door world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned ...... The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four ...... At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies...there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven."
"Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and that fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand."
Genius.
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