Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning...Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.

Ideally, we should like to define a good book as one which 'permits, invites, or compels' good reading

The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them,and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols,breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most, or else just silly.