Sunday, May 18, 2008

C.S. Lewis reminds me again

"If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing iself, but ony the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not yet heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. " from The Weight of Glory

2 comments:

Liz said...

I was just reading CS Lewis tonight! :-)

meaghan said...

I'm reading The Weight of Glory right now, and loving it.