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by
C.S. Lewis
“Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations,”
For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
“perhaps it’s an animal that can’t talk but thinks it can.”
“But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.
He was very sad and he wasn’t even sure all the time that he had done the right thing; but whenever he remembered the shining tears in Aslan’s eyes he became sure.
But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!
That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”
Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
When things go wrong, you’ll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.
a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
“Wherever is this?” said Peter’s voice, sounding tired and pale in the darkness. (I hope you know what I mean by a voice sounding pale.)
they rolled the huge Lion over on his back and tied all his four paws together, shouting and cheering as if they had done something brave, though, had the Lion chosen, one of those paws could have been the death of them all.
“Would you like a saucer of milk, Pussums?”
the shorn face of Aslan looked to her braver, and more beautiful, and more patient than ever.
“I can’t bear to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder, could we take it off?”
if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you—you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.
Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
Death itself would start working backward.
whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.
That’s what I like about Aslan. No side, no stand-off-ishness. Us Lions. That meant him and me.”
He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”
No one can teach riding so well as a horse.
For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you’re taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.
People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them, and if you’re there you can hardly help feeling that you’re out of it.
“Easily in but not easily out, as the lobster said in the lobster pot!”
One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them,
But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.
He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.
You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.
“I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Child,” said the voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
What luck that I hit it!—at least it wasn’t luck at all really, it was Him.
Do not dare not to dare.
“It is very true,” said Edmund. “But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.” And he looked very thoughtful.
“For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”
they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.
But roast apples are not much good without sugar, and they are too hot to eat with your fingers till they are too cold to be worth eating.
“Stop it. And never let me catch you talking—or thinking either—about all those silly stories again. There never were those Kings and Queens. How could there be two Kings at the same time? And there’s no such person as Aslan. And there are no such things as lions. And there never was a time when animals could talk. Do you hear?”
Your Kings are in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget that in all stories Aslan comes from over the sea. They don’t want to go near it and they don’t want anyone else to go near it.
“That’s the worst of girls,” said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. “They never carry a map in their heads.” “That’s because our heads have something inside them,” said Lucy.
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which were which?”
“Now, child,” said Aslan, when they had left the trees behind them, “I will wait here. Go and wake the others and tell them to follow. If they will not, then you at least must follow me alone.”
Then he turned and welcomed Edmund. “Well done,” were his words.
Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, “Susan.” Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. “You have listened to fears, child,” said Aslan. “Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?”
The sort of “History” that was taught in Narnia under Miraz’s rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story.
If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.
“I have sometimes wondered, friend,” said Aslan, “whether you do not think too much about your honor.”
“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”
