Eva > Eva's Quotes

“I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

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

“Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?”
― Walker Percy

“You can make anything by writing.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”
― C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia, #4)

“Do not dare not to dare.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' says the White Queen to Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“‎You're not the same as you were before," he said. You were much more... muchier... you've lost your muchness.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor less.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

“when she thought it over afterwards it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“But if I’m not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass

“So she was considering in her own mind...whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up & picking the daisies...”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people.

And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.

The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.”
― Wendell Berry

“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
― Jimmy Carter

“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm,
waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like
worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their
songs never cease. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)”
― John Muir

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― wendell berry

“Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”
― Wendell Berry