A Tribute to Jack

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.

Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."

Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different...

When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.

All get what they want; they do not always like it.

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.

Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

When Christ died, he died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only person in the world.

If God forgives us we must forgive ourselves otherwise its like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

All these toys were never intended to possess my heart. My true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ.

Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.

Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

If you're thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you're embarking on something, which will take the whole of you.

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.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

When you are arguing against God you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.

There would be no sense in saying you trusted Jesus if you would not take his advice.

God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you do, and you will presently come to love him.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen — not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.