C. S. Lewis discussion

I'm just curious to know what your favorite quote is by C.S. Lewis. Hopefully we will come across new quotes!

"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that He will make us good because He loves us."

"Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good." Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.
-The Horse and His Boy

Not sure about favorites, but this is one that meant a lot when i needed it. “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.” Screwtape Letters

This is mine "I feel a strong desire to tell you-and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which
is the worse. You see why, of course?"
Mere Christianity

"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you already are is that you very often succeed." The Magician's Nephew

and

"Between ourselves, you haven't been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor." The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I am on Aslan's side even if there is no Aslan to lead.
Marsh-wiggle -The Silver Chair

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. - On Three Ways of Writing for Children

Sarah wrote: "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 ..."

I think this is now my new favorite quote. And I loved his letters with young children. He takes them seriously and addresses their concerns. Amazing, for a man who never had children of his own, to know just how to talk to them.

from The Last Battle:
"Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

and at the very end, after telling Lucy & all that they are actually dead, Alsan says:

" The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

Both of these quotes make me teary-eyed, & fill me with hope.

Good and evil are not static; they are dynamic. Each one continually feeds on itself just like compound interest in the bank. Good is always getting better, and evil is always getting worse.

Nice one Lisa! Which book is that from?

I'm not sure Rico. I found it on the internet one time and really liked it, so I copied it down.

“I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia - the Horse and His boy

In order to overcome the darkness out there, you must first conquer the darkness inside of you...

~ C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles... - the Voyage of the dawn...

Jerome wrote: "In order to overcome the darkness out there, you must first conquer the darkness inside of you...

~ C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles... - the Voyage of the dawn..."

Great quote, Jerome!

Thanks Phil...

Jill wrote: "Not sure about favorites, but this is one that meant a lot when i needed it. “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intend..."

LOVE that quote! That book is just full of wonderful wisdom and truth wrapped up in a story. Thank you, Jill!

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. The Four Loves

I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then, of course, the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed [sic] much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

Essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” C.S. Lewis

My #1 favourite Lewis quote is:

""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."