C. S. Lewis

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

'The Lion' all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, 'Let's try to make a story about it.'

We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

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.

Solemnity is proper in church, but things that are proper in church are not necessarily proper outside, and vice versa. For example, I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.

I'm tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

'Good English' is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

Nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you'd been the only man in the world.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

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.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.