Eros

"Most of our ancestors were married off in early youth to partners chosen by their parents on grounds that had nothing to do with eros"

This stood out to me because I think we take for granted our freedom to love and to chose who to give our love too.  I think it is good to remember that not so long ago people didnt get that chance.  Like Lewis said, our ancestors had their partners chosen for them by their parents.  How many of us today would like our parents to choose our partners?  I know I wouldnt!  I guess when I read that it really made me appreciate the freedom I have and I feel bad for those people who didnt get to choose.  

"Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing itself, Eros wants the Beloved"

This stuck out to me as a young man.  I think it is the "ideal" idea for how a young man is to judge whether or not he is ready for a true quality relationship.  If all we feel is sexual desire, then the only thing we really want is the sex.  That means you dont care about your partner, you are using your partner to fulfill that need and then they become an object.  When you have Eros, you are in love with the person and everything about them.  I just liked that little sentence.  It means a lot to me and I think it is important to understand that idea.  

This also goes along with what Lewis says next...

"We use  a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a women".  Strictly speaking a women is just what he does not want.  He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus.

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"The gnat like cloud of petty anxieties and decisions about the conduct of the next hour have interferred with with my prayers more than any passion or appetite whatever"

I appreciated what Lewis was saying here and he said this within context to what St. Paul was saying when he was talking about the distractions of marriage.  Some of us, including myself, sometimes get the idea that the big passions in our life will destroy us.  But Paul and Lewis seem to say that it is the smaller and petty things in life will end up distracting us more.  I think thats a great point.  Lewis even said it bluntly, its not the marriage bed that will disrupt our relationship with God its the marriage itself, with all  its little distractions.  And I never really much liked that verse...I mean come on...life is way to short to not enjoy something as beautiful as marriage and sex!  I never really agreed with why Paul would ask us not to enjoy something like that...?

"It is a continual demonstration of the truth that we are composite creatures, rational animals, akin on one side to the angels, on the other tom-cats"

What a perfect description of what a man or woman is!  We are half angelic and half animal.  Or at least that is how I interpreted that sentence to mean.  I have defninitley noticed times when I have acted on my "angelic" side and other times I have acted like an "animal".  I think this is the constant struggle of being a human being.  Spiritually we call it the spirit vs. the flesh.  I just liked the way Lewis put that one!