“I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Though it was bright sunshine everyone felt suddenly cold. The only two people present who seemed to be quite at their ease were Aslan and the Witch herself. It was the oddest thing to see those two faces - the golden face and the dead-white face so close together. Not that the Witch looked Aslan exactly in his eyes; Mrs Beaver particularly noticed this.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. ”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If you live for the next world, you get this one in the deal; but if you live only for this world, you lose them both.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Fancy sleeping on air. I wonder if anyone's done it before. I don't suppose they have. Oh, bother—-Scrubb probably has!
―
C.S. Lewis
“But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me 'she goes on.' But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Each time you fall He'll pick you up. He knows your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The home is the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose, and that is to support the ultimate career.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.”
―
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
