“Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers--or should I say, nurses?--will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Human beings look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well, and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing--rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“She remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own. ”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
―
C.S. Lewis
