“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Why should your Majesty expect it? My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek will be head of the talking mice in Narnia.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We thought the Duke would have been pleased if the King's Majesty would have married his daughter, but nothing came of that--'
Squints, and has freckles,' said Caspian.
Oh, poor girl,' said Lucy.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion.
"Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“They [Narnia] are, perhaps, the greatest classics of children’s literature of the twentieth century.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind legs off a donkey.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies--these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.”
―
C.S. Lewis
