C.S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love and Literature. Andrea Assaf Kirk

book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.

       Surprised by Joy

      We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.

       The Four Loves

      Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.

       The Weight of Glory

      It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

       Mere Christianity

      We do not want merely to see beauty … We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

       Transposition and Other Addresses

      Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

       Mere Christianity

      All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.

       Surprised by Joy

      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.

       Mere Christianity

      All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.

       The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis

      I call it joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from happiness and 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 … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.

       Surprised by Joy

      If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.

       Mere Christianity

      If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes Evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

       The Case for Christianity

      I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

       God in the Dock

      Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect—perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.