“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
“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Dearest Daughter. I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“the Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A noble friend is the best gift. A noble enemy is the next best.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground…He [God] made the pleasure: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He [God] has forbidden. ”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words.”
―
C.S. Lewis