“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Well!' said Puddleglum, rubbing his hands. 'This is just what I needed. If these chaps don't teach me to take a serious view of life, I don't know what will.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness; you are not needed there at all. No scope of your talents; only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God
―
C.S. Lewis
“until the theologians and the ordained clergy begin to communicate with ordinary people in the vernacular, in a way that they can understand, I’m going to have to do this sort of thing.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“By gum,' said Digory, 'Don't I just wish I was big enough to punch your head!”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is always the novice who exaggerates.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I object to that remark very strongly!
- The Magician's Nephew”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the 'Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”
―
C.S. Lewis
