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.

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til...

Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see…...

I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer.”I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”There is no...

Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to my self.

I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun – not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else.

You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply...

I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside of their special subject.

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else-whether a distance mountain, or the past, or the golds of Asgard-does the “thrill” arise. It is a...

In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job–where the machine seems to run on much as usual–I loath the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a...

Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore...

Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong...

Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of...

The Divine “goodness” differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different; it differs from ours not as white from black, but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel....

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of...

Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny…

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a...

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was...

I wanted not the momentary suspense but the whole world to which it belonged.

Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines and angles.

I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,And when he shakes his mane, we shall have...

I wish I had never been born,” she said. “What are we born for?” “For infinite happiness,” said the Spirit. “You can step out into it at any moment…

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.

Even if there were pains in Heaven, all who understand would desire them.

You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort....

We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into...

Revolutions often perpetuate the old evil under a new name.

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second...

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign...

I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid...

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” C.S. Lewis

The home is the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose, and that is to support the ultimate career.

Some readers cannot enjoy the shepherds because they know (or they say they know) that real country people are not more happy or more virtuous than any one else; but it would be tedious here...

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary

A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.

To generalize is to be an idiot,” said Blake. Perhaps he went too far. But to generalize is to be a finite mind. Generalities are the lenses with which our intellects have to manage.

Suddenly the lights of the Universe seemed to be turned down. As if some demon had rubbed the heaven’s face with a dirty sponge, the splendour in which they had lived for so long blenched...

But as long as you know you’re nobody special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.

. . . the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, praised most, while the crank, misfits and malcontents praised least.

You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12….

There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in damnation: what Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell. They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down...

I never noticed that the very strength and facility of the pessimists’ case at once poses us a problem. If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human...

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

The ease with which we can now get an audience for a discussion of religion does not prove that more people are becoming religious. What it really proves is the existence of a large “floating...