“This is our dilemma--either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste--or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. [. . .] Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, "Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I wonder do the gods know what it feels like to be a man.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you!”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you're making.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
―
C.S. Lewis
