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

"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 and beyond."
— C.S. Lewis

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there is never more than one."
— C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength)

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat."
— Mark Twain

"Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog."
— Eleanor Clark

"What greater gift than the love of a cat."
— Charles Dickens

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."
— C.S. Lewis

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

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."
— C.S. Lewis

"That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never can carry a map in their heads."
"That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy."
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)

"I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis."
— C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"[Fairy tale] does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"'Pan, who and what art though?' he cried huskily.
'I'm youth, I'm joy,' Peter answered at a venture, 'I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.'"
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

"Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal."
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

"This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)