最偉大牛津人 C.S.Lewis 的經典妙語

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他在一生中，完成了三類很不相同的事業。傑出的牛津劍橋大學文學史家和批評家，代表作包括《牛津英國文學史 •16世紀卷》。基督教神學家和演說家，代表作包括《四種愛》、《返璞歸真》、《天路回歸》、《地獄來信》等等。

他一生著書逾30部，深受歡迎的科學幻想作家和兒童文學作家，代表作包括《納尼亞傳奇》七部曲和《太空》三部曲。此外還有學術著作、小說、詩集、童話，他在全世界擁有龐大的支持者。時至今日，他的作品每年還在繼續吸引著成千上萬新的讀者。

C.S. 路易斯（Clive •Staples•Lewis）

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

教育若失去了價值觀的層次，不管它多麼有用，都只能塑造一個更聰明的妖魔。

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

在文學和藝術的創作中，誰拘泥於原創性，誰就不可能原創。然而，如果你單純地嘗試說出真理，一點都不在乎它是否被說過多少次，十之八九你正在原創中而不自知。

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

去愛，就會受到傷害。愛任何事物，你的心就會有苦惱、會傷痛。如果你想保護你的心不受任何傷害，你必須什麼都不愛，甚至連動物也不行。

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

你要用很多的嗜好及享受，把它小心翼翼地包裹起來，避免任何情感上的牽掛。把你的心，完全封鎖在自我中心的棺木里。

But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

然而在那裡，安全、黑暗、穩定、真空，心卻變了質。它不會收到傷害，但卻會變得堅硬不破、麻木不仁、不可救藥。

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

基督徒不認為，因為我們是良善的，所以上帝愛我們；而是因為上帝愛我們，祂使我們成為良善。

If God is Love, He is, by definition something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

如果上帝是愛，那麼就定義上說，祂遠遠不只是仁慈的。從所有的記載都可以看到，儘管祂經常訓斥我們，但祂從不輕視我們。祂愛人，給予人不可承受的尊重，是最為深沉、最具悲情，同時是無可抗拒的愛。

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

勇氣不只是一個德行，它是每一個德行在受嚴謹考驗時刻所呈現的形式。

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

上帝在我們的歡愉中對我們低語，通過我們的良心向我們說話，但卻在我們的痛苦中大聲疾呼。痛苦原來是上帝的揚聲器，為要喚醒充耳不聞的眾生。

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

我相信基督教，正如我相信太陽已經升起一樣：並不只是因為我看見了它，而是因為通過它，我看見了一切事物。

A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute.

一個冷漠、自義的道學先生，儘管經常上教堂，他可能比一個妓女更接近地獄。

Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.

那些恨惡良善的人，有時倒比那些對良善一無所知卻又自命良善的人，更接近良善。

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

成為一個基督徒，就是寬恕那不可寬恕的，因為上帝已經寬恕了你生命里不可寬恕的一切。

The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so.

這世界並不是由百分百的基督徒，和百分百的非基督徒所組成。這當中有人，許許多多稱呼自己是基督徒的人，包括一些神職人員，但卻緩慢地不再是基督徒。這當中也有不自認為基督徒的人，卻在逐漸地成為基督徒。

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

有限的人可以提出連上帝也無法回答的問題嗎？我想，這一點也不困難，因為所有無稽之問都是無法回答的。

I didn』t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don』t recommend Christianity.

我尋找宗教，並不是因為它能讓我快樂。我向來知道，一瓶酒已經能夠讓我開心。如果你想尋找一個令自己感覺舒服的信仰，那麼我肯定不會推薦基督教。

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

如果整個宇宙沒有意義，我們就從來不會發現它沒有意義。正如，如果這宇宙沒有光，那生物也不會有眼睛，我們也察覺不出黑暗，而黑暗本身根本也沒有任何意義。

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

如果我們發現自己內心有一個渴望，不是這世間所能滿足的，最可能的解釋是，我們的存在是為了另一世界。

Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake.

人不是宇宙的中心。上帝不是為了人而存在，人也不是為了自己而存在。

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

尋找真理，你最終或許可以找到安慰；尋找安慰，你既得不到安慰，也得不到真理。只會在開始階段得到一些泡沫與不切實際的思想，和最終徹底的失望。