We are inveterate poets. Our imaginations awake. Instead of mere quantity, we now have a quality – the sublime. Unless this were so, the merely arithmetical greatness of the galaxy would be no more impressive than the figures in a telephone directo...
Writing for children "compels you to throw all the force of the book into what was done and said. It checks what a kind, but discerning critic called 'the expository demon' in me.
A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.
The truth is not that we need the critics in order to enjoy the authors, but that we need the authors in order to enjoy the critics.
And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
All literature becomes a sacred text.
I had rather that the human race, having a certain quality in their lives, should continue for only a few centuries than that, losing freedom, friendship, dignity, and mercy, and learning to be quite content without them, they should continue for mil...
Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next.
In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.
If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were educated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs t...
One of see. S. Louis's endeavors as a teacher was to persuade young people that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring then second-hand knowledge, but it is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. And so, Lewis wrote, a stu...
Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table.
The proper study of man is everything.
I am not a scholar of the past, but I am a lover of the past.
No man would find an abiding strangeness on the Moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden.
It has always been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but it is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
You will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on Earth, the ones you gave away or lent.
If only you and I (or you or I) doesn't go and die before we have a chance to meet! And yet, if we did no doubt there would be some good and loving reason for it. I am (except in bad moods) more convinced of that all the time. We shall meet and be ha...
All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Every desire must be criticized by the whole Man.
