Quotes from C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?

Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bite him if she can. But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.

And there's also 'To him that hath shall be given.' After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.' She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all' eterna fontana.

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.