I cannot remember when we began this little project, but in 2020 we worked our way through some choice quotes from C.S. Lewis.

This is an especially good one.

Here is a link to all Screwtape posts (only 11?): https://www.bigfoodetc.com/?s=screwtape

Crappy Old Quote of the Day | Disgusting little human vermin

Published on August 18, 2020 by Marica 

Disappointment    

[Senior devil Screwtape to junior devil Wormwood, whose ‘patient’ is a newly converted church goer:]

“Work hard, then, on the disappointment  or anti-climax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks  as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of  every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and  begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—‘sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with  the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them:  He leaves them to ‘do it on their own.’ And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.”      

–C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter II

The Quotable Lewis (1990)