“I know,” said Peter. “Perhaps better than anyone. But you can’t stay a child forever. To choose to speak into Echo’s Well is to choose illusion. To choose to avoid the responsibilities of being an adult. The real trick—the real choice—is to keep the best of the child you were, without forgetting when you grow up.
“It is the best of both worlds, Jack. Being a child is to believe in magic everywhere…
“…but even Peter Pan had to grow up one day.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris-
ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be
expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have
been far more impressed by the bad manners of par-
ents to children than by those of children to parents.
Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family
meals where the father or mother treated their
grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered
to any other young people, would simply have termi-
nated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on mat-
ters which the children understand and their elders
don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions,
ridicule of things the young take seriously some-
times of their religion insulting references to their
friends, all provide an easy answer to the question
"Why are they always out? Why do they like every
house better than their home?" Who does not prefer
civility to barbarism?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You have a traitor there, Aslan," said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he'd been through and after the talk he'd had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn't seem to matter what the Witch said.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."
―
C.S. Lewis
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions 'on the further shore,' pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There's not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn't be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.' There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.”
―
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
“who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is a happy moment when our desire crosses with the will of Heavenly Father.”
―
C.S. Lewis
