(via books-and-coffee-lover)
“remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) things we ought to do (2) things we’ve got to do (3) things we like doing. i say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of the three reasons, things like reading books they don’t like because other people read them.” - letters to children, cs lewis
(via soverypretty)
(via teacoffeebooks)
(via thiis-is-a-part-of-me)
“affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.” - the four loves, cs lewis
“but in reading great literature i become a thousand men and yet remain myself. like the night sky in the greek poem, i see with a myriad eyes, but it is still i who see. here, as in worship, love, in moral action, and in knowing, i transcend myself; and am never more myself than when i do.” - an experiment in criticism, cs lewis
(via booklover)
“all men have waited with ever-decreasing hope, day after day, for some one or for something that does not come, and all would willingly forget the experience.” - allegory of love, cs lewis
“it is a mischievous error to suppose that in an allegory the author is ‘really’ talking about the thing symbolized, and not at all about the thing that symbolizes; the very essence of the art is to talk about both.” - allegory of love, cs lewis
(via breadlove)
“for doubtless it is a rule in poetry that if you do your own work well, you will find you have done also work you never dreamed of.” - allegory of love, cs lewis
“do not let us be deceived by the allegorical form. that, as we have seen, does not mean that the author is talking about non-entities, but that he is talking about the inner world— talking, in fact, about the realities he knows best.” - the allegory of love, cs lewis
(via prettybooks)
(via prettybooks)
“for the function of allegory is not to hide but to reveal, and it is properly used only for that which cannot be said, or so well said, in literal speech. the inner life, and specially the life of love, religion, and spiritual adventure, has therefore always been the field of true allegory; for here there are intangibles that only allegory can fix and reticences which only true allegory can overcome.” - allegory of love, cs lewis
(via prettybooks)
“and grief still feels like fear. perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. it gives life a permanently provisional feeling. it doesn’t seem worth starting anything. i can’t settle down … up till this i always had too little time. now here is nothing but time. almost pure time, empty successiveness.” - a grief observed, cs lewis
“her expectation was strung up to the height; something that would have been terror but for the joy, and joy but for the terror, possessed her— an all-absorbing tension of excitement and obedience. everything else in her life seemed small and commonplace compared with this moment.” - that hideous strength, cs lewis
(via vaere)
“jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. it would be nice, jane thought, to be like that— so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall.” - that hideous strength, cs lewis
