C. S. Lewis

Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do.

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.

Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together. If the voice within us does not say this it is not the voice of Eros.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.

Nothing is yet in its true form.

He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."

Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you!

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan.

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

The man in Christ rose again, not only the God.

On the back of Satan's neck is a nail scarred footprint.

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.

It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself-to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed.