To the glistening Eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy, the Valiant. To the great Western Wood, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant Southern sun, Queen Susan, the Gentle; and to the clear Northern sky I give you King Peter, the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen. May your wisdom grace us 'til the stars rain down from the heavens.

I can answer that only by hearsay, returned the Guide, for pain is a secret which he has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mountain people. But those who know best say this, that any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer; and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want.

As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.

The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.

Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside of their special subject.