Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant....As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden.

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains", said Edmund, "That's because we've got something in them", replied Lucy.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

You can't know, you can only believe - or not.

Your place in Heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it.

My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.