We must picture Oxford, during World War I, not as the neomedieval paradise it would like to be, but as the military compound it was obliged to become.

Lewis had developed a trademark style, slow enough for note taking, loud enough to rouse the dullest listener, straightforward, abundantly furnished with quotations, and lavish in wit.

A letter Lewis wrote reveals an 18-year-old with the energy of a schoolboy and the tastes of an octogenarian.

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Imagination pointed toward truth but could not disclose it directly.

The arts are the best Time Machine we have." C. S. Lewis

Now he must put into practice all his fine poetic thoughts about romantic love.

Passion does not translate easily into good income.

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

The unavoidable harshness of life surprised none of them, for they were Christians one and all, believing that they inhabited a fallen world, albeit one filled with God's grace.

Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

And what if I did run my ship aground oh still it was splendid to sail it!

The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.

Mostly the loss teaches us only about the value of things.

Work doesn't seem to interfere with my life. I have time for everything, even time to be alone.

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

God strikes not as an enemy, to destroy; but as a father, to correct.

Let him who looks for a monument to Washington look around the United States. Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your prodigious growth are a monument to him.

Let's try and create scenes that are about something... About something deeper than this ashtray.

Better do nothing than do ill.