Out of the Silent Planet (Space Trilogy, #1)

by C.S. Lewis

There was something about the whole scene suspicious enough and disagreeable enough to convince him that he had blundered on something criminal, while on the other hand he had all the deep, irrational conviction of his age and class that such things could never cross the path of an ordinary person except in fiction and could least of all be associated with professors and old schoolfellows.

Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are.

Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view.

pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmn, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”

It was necessary, and the necessary was always possible.

But the other part of him urged him to hold on to his newfound manhood; now or never—with such companions or with none—he must leave a deed on his memory instead of one more broken dream.

“It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of the pupils. “It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray. “They cannot help it,” said the old sorn. “There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair—or one trying to see over a whole country when he is on a level with it—like a female trying to beget young on herself.”

the island, but his feeling was rather that the island was having a look at him. This was greatly increased by a discovery he made after he had been walking for about an hour, and which he ever afterwards found great difficulty in describing. In the most abstract terms it might be summed up by saying that the surface of the island was subject to tiny variations of light and shade which no change in the sky accounted for. If the air had not been calm and the groundweed too short and firm to move in the wind, he would have said that a faint breeze was playing with it, and working such slight alterations in the shading as it does in a cornfield on the Earth. Like the silvery noises in the air, these footsteps of light were shy of observation. Where he looked hardest they were least to be seen: on the edges of his field of vision they came crowding as though a complex arrangement of them were there in progress. To attend to any one of them was to make it invisible, and the minute brightness seemed often to have just left the spot where his eyes fell. He had no doubt that he was “seeing”—as much as he ever would see—the eldila. The sensation it produced in him was curious.

Bent creatures are full of fears. But I am here now and ready to know your will with me.”

Let me see if there is anything in your mind besides fear and death and desire.”

It seems to me, Thick One, that what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left.”

a bent hnau can do more evil than a broken one.

the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.”