The Screwtape Letters
By: C.S.Lewis
HarperOne; Reprint edition (April 21, 2015)
209 pages
The Screwtape Letters is about the fight for your soul. Is there a war being waged just out of sight? In our temptation, what does it sound like just out of our reach? Does the temptation understand human nature better than even we do? This classic work does not disappoint. Read and grow.
Two of my favorite quotes:
I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble’, and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods?