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

Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured.

I expect you have seen someone put a a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny steak of flame creeping along the edged of the newspaper. It was like that now.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.

A little lie is like a little pregnancy it doesn't take long before everyone knows.

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees