All 5 Uses
attain
in
The Screwtape Letters
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- For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it: resignation to present and actual suffering, even where that suffering consists of fear, is far easier and is usually helped by this direct action.†
Chpt 6 *attain = gain or reach something with effort
- All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting-point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty.†
Chpt 14
- But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future-haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.†
Chpt 15
- We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is, Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE XXVI MY DEAR WORMWOOD, Yes; courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years later into domestic hatred.†
Chpt 25
- They also know that the Enemy demands of them a degree of charity which, if attained, would result in similar actions.†
Chpt 26attained = gained or reached something with effort
Definitions:
-
(1)
(attain) to gain or reach something with effort
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)