Lewis: the life & literature of

“Be merry, little ones.”

“In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

“How the years flick past at our time of life, don’t they: like telegraph posts seen from an express train: and how they crawled once, when the gulf between one Christmas and another was too wide almost for a child’s eye to see across.”

“It is well to have specifically holy places, and things, and days, for, without these focal points or reminders, the belief that all is holy and ‘big with God’ will soon dwindle into a mere sentiment. But if these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of ‘religion’.”

“If I ever see more clearly I will speak more surely.”

“The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.”

“… the night sky suggests that the inanimate also has for God some value we can not imagine.”

“Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?”

“We can bear to be refused but not be ignored.”

“Your darkness has brought back my own.”

“The deeper the level within ourselves from which our prayer, or any other act, wells up, the more it is His, but not at all the less ours. Rather, most ours when most His.”

“The trouble is that people draw conclusions even from silence.”

“Breathe fast with the sheer wonder of it.”

“For up until now, we have been tackling the whole question in the wrong way and on the wrong level. The very question ‘does prayer work?’ puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. ‘Work’: as if it were magic, or a machine…”

“He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.”

“Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it. And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the same sort themselves. What’s that? How will you know? Oh, you’ll know all right. Odd things they say- even their looks- will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open.”