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Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Broadcaster
Essayist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Joy
Possible
Though
Free
Evil
Makes
Also
Goodness
Love
Worth

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What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all.
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Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
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Edmund, give a special goodbye to Trumpkin for me. He's been a brick.
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Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.
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In Charn [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them they are terribly practical.
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If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?
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Father! Can I box him? Please!
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All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
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Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.
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In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, as Herbert says, fine nets and stratagems. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
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There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he has read them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?
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To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
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The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
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Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.
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If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.
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Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured.
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That's the worst of girls, said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. They never can carry a map in their heads. That's because our heads have something inside them, said Lucy.
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Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author's control.
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Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
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No emotion is, in itself, a judgement in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.
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