C. S. Lewis

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 and better one.

No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.

Dearest Daughter. I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.

and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

Being nice doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you feel good because you know you are gracious enough to forgive and smart enough to realize how distasteful some people can be.

But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.

In your world, I have another name. You should know me by it.

The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.

There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.

Everything is as good or bad as our opinion makes it.

An 'impersonal God'-well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads-better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap-best of all. But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, King, husband-that is quite another matter.

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.

A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.

In the name of the Fathers, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes-I mean Amen.

you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words.

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad.

"I wish I had never been born," she said. _x000D_ "What are we born for?" _x000D_ "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. _x000D_ "You can step out into it at any moment..."

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

the sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell.