PRIDE

'Yes, I know one doesn't even want to be cured of one's pride because it gives pleasure. But the pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch: but it is so much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval: but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither, but have everything else (God, our fellow human-beings, animals, the garden & the sky) instead.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.429.

CHILDREN

'I have now perceived (what I always suspected from memories of our childhood) that the way to a child's heart is quite simple: treat them with seriousness & ordinary civility - they ask no more. What they can't stand (quite rightly) is the common adult assumption that everything they say shd. be twisted into a kind of jocularity.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.390.

AGE

'You see, I don't think that age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12 ...'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.362.

GOD

'The two things one must NOT do are (a) To believe, on the strength of Scripture or on any other evidence, that God is any way evil. (In Him is no darkness at all.) (b) To wipe off the slate any passage which seems to show that He is. Behind that apparently shocking passage, be sure, there lurks some great truth which you don't understand. If one ever does come to understand it, one will see that [He] is good and just and gracious in ways we never dreamed of.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.356.

ADJECTIVES

'... Adjectives which are a direct command to the reader to feel a certain emotion are no use. In vain we tell him that a thing was horrible, beautiful or mysterious. We must so present it that he exclaims horrible! beautiful! or mysterious!'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.344.

RESPONSIBILITY

'I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, 'WE', the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious 'US', WE are apparently perfect and blameless. Don't you believe it!'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.333.

CHRISTIAN TEACHERS

'... Christian teachers in secular schools may, I sometimes think, do more good precisely because they are not allowed to give religious instruction in class. At least I think that, as a child, I shd. have been very allured and impressed by the discovery - which must be made when questions are asked - that the teacher believed firmly in a whole mass of things he wasn't allowed to teach! Let them give us the charm of mystery if they please.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.332.

PRIDE

'As long as one knows one is proud one is safe from the worse form of pride.'
CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.191.

JESUS

'When people object, as you do, that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water shd refuse a rope thrown him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying "Oh but you have an unfair advantage"; it is because of that advantage that He can help.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.143.

LOVE

'Or say there are two kinds of love: we love wise & kind & beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid & disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind of love is the more divine, because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.119.