“You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”
―
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
“He is not a tame lion," said Tirian. "How should we know what he would do? We, who are murderers. Jewel, I will go back. I will give up my sword and put myself in the hands of these Calormenes and ask that they bring me before Aslan. Let him do justice on me."
"You will go to your death, then," said Jewel.
"Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?" said the King. "That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun."
"I know," said Jewel. "Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up."
"There is no need for both of us to go."
"If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now," said the Unicorn. "If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. ... One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. ... I repeatedly followed that path - to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. ... You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. ... Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I'm afraid it's not much use to you, Mr. Rumblebuffin.'
Not at all. Not at all.' said the giant politely. 'Never met a nicer hankerchee.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Satan always sends error into the world in pairs that are opposites. His great hope is that you will get so upset about one of his errors, that you'll react into the opposite one, and he's got you.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I do not expect old heads on young shoulders.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I have seen something like it happen in battle. A man was coming at me, I at him, to kill. Then came a sudden great gust of wind that wrapped out cloaks over our swords and almost over our eyes, so that we could do nothing to one another but must fight the wind itself. And that ridiculous contention, so foreign to the business we were on, set us both laughing, face to face - friends for a moment - and then at once enemies again and forever.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else.
Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
―
C.S. Lewis
