We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only...

Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!

An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. [speaking...

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze....

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...

[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false,” but as “academic”...

But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the...

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an...

Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. “I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars...

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...

The present state of the world is normal; it with the last (19th) century that with the abnormality.

A man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his 50-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth than scorned...

Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.

This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!

happen to be there.” Made forus? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

They say an unhappy man wants distractions-something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and...

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness – the desire to see...

All literature becomes a sacred text.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Now obviously all this–taking upon oneself to hate those whom one things God’s enemies, avoiding the society of those one thinks wicked, judging our neighbors, thinking oneself “too good” for some of them (not in...

Amar é, sempre, ser vulnerável. Para que nunca se sofra com isso, aconselha-se não se amar algo, ou mesmo, alguém. Se sugere proteger a si mesmo nos próprios hobbies, mimos e zelos, evitar qualquer envolvimento...

If you are foe, we do not fear you. If you are friend, your foes will be taught the fear of us.

Only an obstinate prejudice about this period (which I will presently try to account for) could blind us to a certain change which comes over the merely literary texts as we pass from the Middle...

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 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...