“and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable. The Pagans obeyed this impulse unabashed; a good man was "dear to the gods" because he was good. We, being better taught, resort to subterfuge. Far be it from us to think that we have virtues for which God could love us. But then, how magnificently we have repented! As Bunyan says, describing his first and illusory conversion, "I thought there was no man in England that pleased God better than I." Beaten out of this, we next offer our own humility to God's admiration. Surely He'll like that? Or if not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility. Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtelty, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own attractiveness. It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little--however little--native luminosity? Surely we can't be quite creatures?
―
C.S. Lewis
“Peter, High King of Narnia," said Aslan. "Shut the Door.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?” said the King. “That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I don't want him to live forever, and I know that he's not going to live forever whether I want him to or not.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“No man who says, 'I'm as good as you,' believes it. He would not say it if he did.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“But when your sword breaks, you draw your dagger.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
―
C.S. Lewis
