“A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger".
"That is because you are older, little one" answered he.
"Not because you are?"
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
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C.S. Lewis
“Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going tobring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“But that would be putting the clock back," gasped the Governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"
"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it Going bad in Narnia.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality of whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered to them. ”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman". Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude for her five minutes after fruition.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Emeth speaking of Aslan, "Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek...And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains", said Edmund, "That's because we've got something in them", replied Lucy.”
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C.S. Lewis
“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
“Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)”
―
C.S. Lewis