Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

by C.S. Lewis

it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again.

Children suffer not (I think) less than their elders, but differently.

into which I had hypnotised myself was itself too irreligious for its failure to cause any religious revolution. I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear neither as Saviour nor as Judge, but merely as a magician; and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would simply—well, go away.

Hence while friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of.

For the rest, all that rises out of the sea of arithmetic is a jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports, and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered.

When the boy passes from nursery literature to school-stories he is going down, not up.

Life at a vile boarding-school is in this way a good preparation for the Christian life, that it teaches one to live by hope.

Why should she thus pester me? I had never done her any harm, never asked her to a party.

A fear that guarded the road to Faerie was one I could face.

Soon too we gave up the magazines; we made the discovery (some people never make it) that real books can be taken on a journey and that hours of golden reading can so be added to its other delights.

I accepted games (quite a number of boys do) as one of the necessary evils of life, comparable to Income Tax or the Dentist.

But I must seem to care for both, for a boy goes to a Public School precisely to be made a normal, sensible boy—a good mixer—to be taken out of himself; and eccentricity is severely penalised.

the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects.

I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

He never exactly obeyed you; he sometimes agreed with you.

Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.

Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure.

‘Why—damn it—it’s medieval,’ I exclaimed; for I still had all the chronological snobbery of my period and used the names of earlier periods as terms of abuse.

What does that even mean? Sounds kooky.

The one principle of hell is—‘I am my own.’ GEORGE MACDONALD

Once, when he and Barfield were lunching in my room, I happened to refer to philosophy as ‘a subject’. ‘It wasn’t a subject to Plato,’ said Barfield, ‘it was a way.’

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

You and me both Jack.