Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can’t provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.

The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gifts...Thus a heavy task is laid upon Gift-love. It must work toward its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say 'They need me no longer' should be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfill this law.

Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.

Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.

Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than other people in that respect.

I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.