Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
There might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death.
Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’ – or else not.
Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.
If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?
Music. A meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience.
When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred.
We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.
If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.
If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.
What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.
Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on – including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.
Good and evil both increase at compound interest.