“Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
―
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
“Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is
telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be
naturally loved.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Feeling like the voice she liked best in all the world was calling her name.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The dream is ended- this is the morning.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
―
C.S. Lewis
