C. S. Lewis Quotes from "A Grief Observed"

A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis' short collection of essays that he wrote soon after his wife died or cancer. It is a painfully honest look at grief from a man who was experiencing the deepest depths of it. As usual, the genius of Clive Staples shines though. These were my favorite quotes:

"Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief"

"The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man night be bribed-might grow tired of this vile sport-might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinds and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't? Either way, we're for it. What do people man when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good"? Have they never even been to a dentist?"

"If you're approaching Him (God) not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions 'on the further shore'; not the simple-minded and every earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End. Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. (his deceased wife) again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not?"

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unasnwerable. How amny hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that."