"Some day you will be old enough...."

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
— C.S. Lewis (The World's Last Night: And Other Essays)
"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis
"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis
"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."
— C.S. Lewis
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."
— C.S. Lewis
"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."
— C.S. Lewis
"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."
— C.S. Lewis
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
— C.S. Lewis
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
— C.S. Lewis
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me."
— C.S. Lewis
"God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing."
— C.S. Lewis
"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
— C.S. Lewis
"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."
— C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair)
"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."
— C.S. Lewis
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
— C.S. Lewis
"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn."
— C.S. Lewis
"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. "
— C.S. Lewis
"He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less."
— C.S. Lewis
"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind."
— C.S. Lewis
"Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do."
— C.S. Lewis
"You can make anything by writing."
— C.S. Lewis
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader")
"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?" "But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan. "Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund. "I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
"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."
— C.S. Lewis
"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."
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)
"It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence."
— C.S. Lewis
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
— C.S. Lewis
"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."
— C.S. Lewis
"[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.
Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
— C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)
"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
— C.S. Lewis
"We meet no ordinary people in our lives."
— C.S. Lewis
"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way."
— C.S. Lewis
"I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents' interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass."
— C.S. Lewis
"Things never happen the same way twice. --Aslan"
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)
"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies--these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the
answer is not going to be simple either."
— C.S. Lewis
"Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
— C.S. Lewis
"Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good."
— C.S. Lewis
"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion."
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)
"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are."
— C.S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew)
"When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place."
— C.S. Lewis
"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."
— C.S. Lewis
"The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God s love for us does not."
— C.S. Lewis
"You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)
"Nothing is yet in its true form."
— C.S. Lewis
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"Isn't it funny how day by they nothing changes but when you look back everything is different...."
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)
"He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)"
— C.S. Lewis
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)
"Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."
— C.S. Lewis
"I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis."
— C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."
— C.S. Lewis
"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all. "
— C.S. Lewis
"Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way.
Walk---don't keep on looking at it."
— C.S. Lewis (The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963)
"Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else."
— C.S. Lewis
"But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan."
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)
"God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker."
— C.S. Lewis
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."
— C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold)
"Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."
— C.S. Lewis
"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
— C.S. Lewis
"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."
— C.S. Lewis
"Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!"
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)
Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand."
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
"Numbers don't win a battle."
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)
"It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed."
— C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair)
"Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"Do not dare not to dare."
— C.S. Lewis (The Horse and His Boy)
"Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature."
— C.S. Lewis (Miracles)
"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is."
— C.S. Lewis
"Readers are advised to remember the devil is a liar."
— C.S. Lewis
"Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from "being in love" — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement."
— C.S. Lewis
"Adventures are never fun while you're having them."
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes."
— C.S. Lewis
"The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."
— C.S. Lewis
"Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart."
— C.S. Lewis
"Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive."
— C.S. Lewis
"What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard."
— C.S. Lewis
"Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it."
— C.S. Lewis
"What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience."
— C.S. Lewis
"Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere."
— C.S. Lewis
"I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself."
— C.S. Lewis
"Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next."
— C.S. Lewis
"You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet."
— C.S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew)
"The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own. "
— C.S. Lewis
"It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God."
— C.S. Lewis
"Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny."
— C.S. Lewis
"If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed."
— C.S. Lewis
"For the present is the point at which time touches eternity."
— C.S. Lewis
"There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there is never more than one."
— C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength)
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
— C.S. Lewis
"If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality."
— C.S. Lewis
"We are what we believe we are!"
— C.S. Lewis