The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.

That we, though small, might quiver with Fire’s sameSubstantial form as Thou-not reflect merelyLike lunar angels back to Thee cold flame.Gods are we, Thou hast said; and we pay dearly.

It is very rarely that a middle-aged man finds an author who gives him, what he knew so often in his teens and twenties, the sense of having opened a new door.

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”.

It must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery.

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good – above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are...

intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant...

But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the...

You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave...

A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others…thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each...

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.

Though under earth, and throneless now I beYet while I lived all earth was under me.

The English… are the most deplorable milksops. They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemies and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded...

Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves.

When man comes into the presence of God he will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times, or...

The first in fatal charm of national repentance is the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing – but, first, of...

Child” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.

… “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing...

Life isn’t all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.

He thought plain thoughts and so retained his consciousness.

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

The proper study of man is everything.

She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.

Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.

For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a...

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all.

But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen...

The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and...

The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.

That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.

Feelings come and go, and when they come a good use can be made of them, but they cannot be our regular spiritual diet.

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not ‘a religion’, nor ‘a philosophy.’ It is the summing up and actuality of them...

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we...

Since we do in reality need one another(“it is not good for man to be alone”), then the failure ofthis need to appear as Need-love in consciousness – inother words, the illusory feeling that it...

Unless followed by the world ‘education’, liberal has now lost this meaning [seeking knowledge or doing something for its own sake — i.e. ‘freely’ with no exterior motive]. For that loss, so damanging to the...

Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only...

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been – if you’ve been up all night and cried till...

…here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make...

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species...

. . . the pain itself made Puddleglum’s head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. . . ‘One word, Ma’am,’ he said, coming back from the fire; limping,....

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire....

If ants had a language they would, no doubt, call their anthill an artifact and describe the brick wall in its neighborhood as a natural object. Nature in fact would be for them all that...

Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible...

We are taught in the Prayer Book to “give thanks to God for His great glory”, as if we owed Him more thanks for being what He necessarily is than for any particular benefit He...

The ‘average sensual man’ who is sometimes unfaithful to his wife, sometimes tipsy, always a little selfish, now and then (within the law) a trifle sharp in his deals, is certainly, by ordinary standards, a...

You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December...