"Most people, if they had
really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and
want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts
of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep
their promise ... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this
world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another
world....
Probably earthly pleasures were
never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If
that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be
unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake
them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or
mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I
shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned
aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country
and to help others to do the same."
- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), from Mere Christianity, pp. 135-137
"The true
beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights,
school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday,
lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being
the earth and water of existence, memory."
