C. S. Lewis

“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

“I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical".”

“En cierto modo, llorar está muy bien mientras dura; pero uno tiene que parar tarde o temprano, y entonces hay que decidir qué hacer.”

“A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.”

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

“The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world's end.”

“Watchin' and listenin' is the thing at present; not talking.”

“You look right out into the high place and see the great dance with your own eyes. You live always in that terror and that delight.”

“For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or 'paradoxical' I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question.”

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

“Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.”

“My symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

“Can you lay your hand on your hearts and tell me I'm really alive? Are you sure I wasn't drowned and we're not all ghosts together?”

“In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.”

“Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to my self.”

“The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claim of moral duty.”

“But the most obvious fact about praise -- whether of God or anything -- strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. ... The world rings with praise -- lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. ... I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

“Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”

“The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.”

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

“You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

“In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

“We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer.”

“Child,' said Aslan, 'did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?''Yes, Aslan, you did,' said Lucy. 'I'm sorry. But please-''Speak on, dear heart.''Shall I ever be able to read that story again: the one I couldn't remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.''Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.”

“Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”

“No time for better words, no time to unsay anything.-Til We Have Faces”

“I could never have gone far in any science because on the path of every science the lion Mathematics lies in wait for you.”

“Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'.”

“A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”

“God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.”

“The problem with trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you so very often succeed.”

“Satan always sends error into the world in pairs that are opposites. His great hope is that you will get so upset about one of his errors, that you'll react into the opposite one, and he's got you.”

“I was sick with desire; that sickness better than health.”

“The kind of people we are is more important than what we can do to improve the world; indeed being the kind of people we should and can be is the best, and sometimes the only way to improve the world.”

“The cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning!”

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

“We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: "I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.”

“He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees.”

“If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all.”

“A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. The real reason for democracy is: Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”

“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure they are always very 'spiritual', that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism.”

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

“The more he fears, the more he'll hate.”

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. ”

“No net less wide than a man's whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred Fish.”

“All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!”

“When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”