Gran parte de una desgracia cualquiera consiste, por así decirlo, en la sombra de la desgracia, en la reflexión sobre ella. Es decir en el hecho de que no se limite uno a sufrir, sino...

Writing for children “compels you to throw all the force of the book into what was done and said. It checks what a kind, but discerning critic called ‘the expository demon’ in me.

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put...

The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave us free will.

I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.

Growing maturity is marked by the increasing liberties we take with our travelling… we made the discovery (some people never make it) that real books can be taken on a journey and that hours of...

The master demon Screwtape identifies elitist humanity’s tendency toward “an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men.

He is that Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest...

There is only One on record who has practiced Christianity in every respect at every moment of his life – Christ himself. In that sense, there are no practicing Christians, but only Christians who, in...

Every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not.

Being what we are, rational but also animate, amphibians who start from the world of sense and proceed through myth and metaphor to the world of spirit. I do not see how we could have...

I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through...

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will,...

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling...

If we cannot persuade our friends by reasons we must be content “and not bring a mercenary army to our aid” (He meant passions.)

To think that the spectre you see is an illusion does not rob him of his terrors: it simply adds the further terror of madness itself – and then on top of that the horrible...

The question has become whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of technology without losing all personal privacy and independence.

I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious — as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more...

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which...

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century – the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?” – lies where we have never suspected it…...

If only you and I (or you or I) doesn’t go and die before we have a chance to meet! And yet, if we did no doubt there would be some good and loving reason...

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

I have come,” said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with...

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…

People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.

If you are writing a story, miracles or abnormal events may be bad art, or they may not. If, for example, you are writing an ordinary realistic novel and have got your characters into a...

Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true....

This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we–even our poets and musicians and inventors–never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials...

When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being much...

Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe, but he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.

You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect,’ is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in...

But there is another way of using the equivalence, which is almost the opposite of allegory, and which I would call sacramentalism or symbolism. If our passions, being immaterial, can be copied by material inventions,...

The vocabulary of endearment, complaint, and abuse, provides, I think, almost the only specimens of words that are purely emotional, words from which all imaginative or conceptual content has vanished, so that they have no...

The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the ‘gospels’, the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of...

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.

Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God’s forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people’s sins. Take it first about...

All the practical principles behind the Innovator’s case for posterity, or society, or the species, are there from time immemorial in the Tao. But they are nowhere else. Unless you accept these without question as...

One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.

If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot....

But of course these conjectures as to why God does what He does are probably of no more value than my dog’s ideas of what I am up to when I sit and read.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

Primary Epic is great, but not with the greatness of the later kind. In Homer, its greatness lies in the human and personal tragedy built up against this background of meaningless flux. It is all...

You all know,” said the Guide, “that security is mortals’ greatest enemy.

The claim to equality, outside of the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.

Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you. What are you afraid of? Has this world been so kind to you that you...

Christianity does NOT replace the technical. When he tells you to feed the hungry and doesn’t give you lessons in cookery. If you want to learn THAT, you must go to a cook rather than...

To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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...

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what...

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has...