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C. S. Lewis on the news.

‘It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know).

A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.

As about the distant, so about the future. It is very dark: but there’s usually light enough for the next step or so.‘”

(emphasis added)

Caveat: I found this on Gracy Olmstead’s wonderful Granola newsletter, which doesn’t give a citation for the quote. C. S. Lewis is one of those people (like Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln) to whom quotes tend to get falsely attached on the internet. But I like this one.