Apr 27, 2023
‘What do you keep on arguing for? I’m only telling you the sort of chap I am. I only want my rights. I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity.’
‘Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking & nothing can be bought.’
This is one of my favorite exchanges in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Here the “Big Man” (the first speaker) is insisting on his own decency in his earthly life—ironic considering the reader is introduced to the Big Man when he beats a man up to take his place in the line for the bus to Heaven—& how Heaven is therefore his “by rights.