-
In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.
-
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." He also said: "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 50 and beyond.
-
As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation.
-
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
-
Many thousands of people have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder (pace the novelists) as first love, or even greater.
-
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.
-
Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.
-
For the Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work.
-
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 story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be "like real life" in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region.
-
The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.
-
There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
-
She remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.
-
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 dead things of the universe into life.
-
We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
-
Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.
-
It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most.... It is good of Him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.
-
Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
-
The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.
-
Oh, Lor!' said the boy, sitting down on the grassy bank at the edge of the shrubbery and very quickly getting up again because the grass was soaking wet. His name was unfortunately Eustace Scrubb but he wasn't a bad sort.
-
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.
-
I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.
-
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.
-
‘Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?’