More quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity… As you may have noticed, I created a category just for quotes from this book! Yeah~ 
On how hard it is to be Christian
Book 4 Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
9 Counting the Cost
"This Helper (Christ) who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, ‘God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.’"
"God’s demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection. On the other hand, you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."
"I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. … As we say ‘I never expected to be a saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.’ And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble. But this is the fatal mistake."
"Before we were born, when we were inside our mothers’ bodies, we passed through various stages. We were once rather like vegetables, and once rather like fish: it was only a later stage that we became like human babies. And if we had been conscious at those earlier stages, I daresay we should have been quite contented to stay as vegetables or fish — should not have wanted to be made into babies. But all the time He knew His plan for us and was determined to carry it out. Something the same is now happening at a higher level."
"To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience."
"You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
On whether being Christian makes you a nicer person
Book 4 Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
10 Nice People or New Men
"When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself."
(Haha, I like the following a lot…)
"If Christianity is true then it ought to follow (a) That any Christian will be nicer than the same person would be if he were not a Christian. (b) That any man who becomes a Christian will be nicer than he was before.
Just in the same way, if the advertisements of Whitesmile’s toothpaste are true it ought to follow (a) That anyone who uses it will have better teeth than the same person would have if he did not use it. (b) That if anyone begins to use it his teeth will improve.
But to point out that I, who use Whitesmile’s (and also have inherited bad teeth from both my parents) have not got as fine a set as some healthy young negro who never used any toothpaste at all, does not, by itself, prove that the advertisements are untrue: Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works.
The question is what Miss Bates’s tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick’s would be if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early upbringing, have certain temperaments: Chritianity professes to put both temperaments under new management if they will allow it to do so."
(So that applies to me as well, even though I have temper of a lion’s, that doesn’t say being Catholic is the problem… That just means that my temper would be worse than a lion’s if I’m not Catholic.)
"As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own. It is when Dick realizes that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he offers it back to God — it is just when that it begins to be really his own. For now Dick is beginning to take a share in his own creation. The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose."
"That was what people objected to about Christ during His ife on earth: He seemed to attract ‘such awful people’. … Do you not see why? Christ said ‘Blessed are the poor’ and ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom,’ and no doubt He primarily meant the economically rich and economically poor. But do not his words also apply to another kind of riches and poverty?"
"Often people who have all these natural goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are ‘rich’ in this sense to enter the Kingdom."
1 chapter left… I have to say I’m gonna miss it… But I got 4 other C.S. Lewis’ books last Fri 
b u n n y y a p p i 