How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that.

[The fairy tale] is accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think...

The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our...

The most important events in every age never reach the history books.

That’s all YOU know,’ said Digory. ‘It’s because you’re a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.

No man would find an abiding strangeness on the Moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden.

Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question “Do you see the same truth?” would be “I see nothing and I...

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back — to be sucked back — into it?

I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the...

About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything...

Planning has no magic whereby you can elicit figs from thistles or choke-pears from vines. The rich, sappy, fruit-laden tree will bear sweetness, and strength and spiritual health: the dry, prickly, withered tree will teach...

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you...

I haven’t any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring...

Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the...

How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that...

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it isn’t. We can’t compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We’re dealing with...

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient book should be read only by the professionals, and the amateur should content himself with modern books.

The (children’s) book is a specimen of the most scandalous escapism: it paints a happiness under incompatible conditions – the sort of freedom we can have only in childhood and the sort we can have...

Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is...

I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. … One thing, however, I...

I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen.

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought feeling after feeling action after action had...

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

You describe your Wonderful Night very well. That is, you describe the place & the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well—but not the thing itself—the setting but not the...

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder...

Dicen que los cobardes mueren muchas veces: eso les pasa a los seres amados.

Emeth came walking forward into the open strip of grass between the bonfire and the Stable. His eyes were shining, his face was solemn, his hand was on his sword-hilt, and he carried his head...

Some think it the historian’s business to penetrate beyond this apparent confusion and heterogeneity, and to grasp in a single intuition the ‘spirit’ or ‘meaning’ of his period. With some hesitation, and with much respect...

You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books. I have known a human...

A character began to speculate whether the incessant drive to have things over again might be the root of all evil.

It is clear that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and,...

El amor empieza a ser un demonio desde el momento en que comienza a ser un dios.

…some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you...

If there is a wasp in the room, I’d like to be able to see it.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to...

In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects–with their Christianity latent.

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end,...

A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking “But I never knew before. I never dreamed….” I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own...

The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet. When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts...

We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a...

No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never...