The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1 Quotes

“As to...old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“Do not cite the deep magic to me witch, I was there when it was written.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“How deep I am just now beginning to see: for I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ–in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“We have a little Icelandic Club in Oxford called the ‘Kólbitar’: 38 which means (literally) ‘coal-biters’, i.e. an Icelandic word for old cronies who sit round the fire so close that they look as if they were biting the coals.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“The doctrines of Christianity, or the many different theologies, are less true than the true myth because they are only attempts to translate the story, while God has expressed it all more adequately in the real incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.”
― Walter Hooper, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths:”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“I have a capital story which is quite new to me. The hero is a certain Professor Alexander, a philosopher, at Leeds, but I have no doubt that the story is older than he. He is said to have entered a railway carriage with a large perforated cardboard box which he placed on his knees. The only other occupant was an inquisitive woman. She stood it as long as she could, and at last, having forced him into conversation and worked the talk round (you can fill in that part of the story yourself) ventured to ask him directly what was in the box. ‘A mongoose madam.’ The poor woman counted the telegraph posts going past for a while and again could bear her curiosity no further. ‘And what are you going to do with the mongoose?’ she asked. ‘I am taking it to a friend who is unfortunately suffering from delirium tremens.’ ‘And what use will a mongoose be to him?’ ‘Why, Madam, as you know, the people who suffer from that disease find themselves surrounded with snakes: and of course a mongoose eats snakes.’ ‘Good Heavens!’ cried the lady, ‘but you don’t mean that the snakes are real?’ ‘Oh dear me, no said the Professor with imperturbable gravity. ‘But then neither is the mongoose!”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“As to the German measles–will you think me affected if I number a small illness among the minor pleasures of life? The early stages are unpleasant but at least they bring you to a point at which the mere giving up and going to bed is a relief. Then after twenty four hours the really high temperature and the headache are gone: one is not well enough to get up, but then one is ill enough not to want to get up. Best of all, work is impossible and one can read all day for mere pleasure with a clear conscience.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“So many things have now become interesting to me because at first I had to do them whether I liked them or not, and thus one is kicked into conquering new countries where one is afterwards at home.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“In his letter of 23 October 1928 Warnie wrote of a sea voyage to Hong Kong. ‘The most interesting person on board,’ he said, ‘was the Chief Engineer who was a character straight out of Kipling–such a man as I had always believed never existed outside novels…I first came across him one night after dinner when a few of us collected in the saloon for a mouthful of the port, and McAndrew’s Hymn being mentioned, he expressed his warmest approval of it…This and some more chat led to an invitation to adjourn to his room and inspect “ma buiks”. It was a severe shock after a discussion on Kipling to arrive at his room and come bolt under a withering collection of philosophy–Spencer, Comte, and similar books. I had to mumble something about having no philosophy, which was met with “When ye say ye haaaave no pheelawsophy, Cap’n, ye only mean ye haaave a bad pheelawsophy.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

“Are you often struck, when you become sufficiently intimate with other people to know something of their development, how late their lives begin so to speak? I mean these men you meet who seem to have read everything, done everything, and yet they were pure barbarians until they left school, and had turned twenty perhaps before they began to be interested in the things that interest them now?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931