Lewis' confession about love

God knows, not I, whether I have ever tasted this love. Perhaps I have only imagined the tasting. Those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there. And if I have only imagined it, is it a further delusion that even the imagining has at some moments made all other objects of desire—yes, even peace, to have no more fears—look like broken toys and faded flowers? Perhaps. Perhaps, for many of us, all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be. It is not enough. It is something.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960; Harcourt Brace: 1991) 140.

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Teaching today

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man as reprinted in The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1988) 433.

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Magnet for truth

Fix your mind on any one story or any one doctrine and it becomes at once a magnet to which truth and glory come rushing from all levels of being.

C.S. Lewis, "Miracles," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 37.

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Lewis: I'm no Billy Graham

Finally, I must add that my own work has suffered very much from the incurable intellectualism of my approach. The simple, emotional appeal (‘Come to Jesus’) is still often successful. But those who, like myself, lack the gift for making it, had better not attempt it.

C.S. Lewis, "God in the Dock," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 244.

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Finding your direction (Part 2)

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. 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 disservering power’—or else not. It is still ‘either-or’.

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (HarperCollins: 2001/1946) VIII.

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Finding your direction (Part 1)

You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (HarperCollins: 2001/1946) VIII.

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Why Ezekiel Bulver must be proven wrong

I see Bulverism at work in every political argument. The capitalists must be bad economists because we know why they want capitalism, and equally the Communists must he bad economists because we know why they want Communism. Thus, the Bulverists on both sides. In reality, of course, either the doctrines of the capitalists are false, or the doctrines of the Communists, or both; but you can only find out the rights and wrongs by reasoning — never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology.
    Until Bulverism is crushed, reason can play no effective part in human affairs. Each side snatches it early as a weapon against the other; but between the two reason itself is discredited. And why should reason not be discredited? It would be easy. in answer, to point to the present state of the world, but the real answer is even more immediate. The forces discrediting reason, themselves depend on reasoning. You must reason even to Bulverize. You are trying to prove that all proofs are invalid. If you fail, you fail. If you succeed, then you fail even more — for the proof that all proofs are invalid must be invalid itself.
C.S. Lewis, "'Bulverism,'" God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 274.

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