“I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“For his mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-or-glory charges, and last stands.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“...a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Certainly, Lu. Whatever you like,' said Peter unexpectedly. This was encouraging, but as Peter instantly rolled round and went to sleep again it wasn't much use.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
―
C.S. Lewis
