Best Quotes from The Great Divorce by c.s. Lewis with Page Numbers

Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering.

However far I went I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags...and bookshops of the sort that sell The Works of Aristotle.

But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty.

Come, thought I, that’s two places gained.

I’m a plain man that’s what I am and I got to have my rights same as anyone else, see?

‘This sort of thing really makes one think twice about going at all.’

The Driver himself seemed full of light and he used only one hand to drive with.

I could see nothing in the countenance of the Driver to justify all this, unless it were that he had a look of authority and seemed intent on carrying out his job.

They won’t like it at all when we get there, and they’d really be much more comfortable at home.

Even before we came here I’d had some doubts about a man like Cyril Blellow.

'Capitalism did not merely enslave the workers, it also vitiated taste and vulgarised intellect.'

'But of course it was a mistake. I would find, he assured me, that all the other passengers would be with me on the return journey.'

'The trouble is they have no Needs.'

'It’s scarcity that enables a society to exist.'

'You’d soon get people coming to live near—centralisation.'

'Everyone admits that. Safety in numbers.'

'What’s the trouble about this place? Not that people are quarrelsome—that’s only human nature and was always the same even on Earth.'

'If they needed real shops, chaps would have to stay near where the real shops were.'

'Wouldn’t want to? That’s right.'

'This twilight is ever going to turn into a night.'

‘Golly!’ thought I, ‘I’m in for it this time.’

I had the sense of being in a larger space... it gave me a feeling of freedom, but also of exposure, possibly of danger.

It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country.

Who will give me words to express the terror of that discovery?

You need never come back unless you want to.

What does one do?

The solitude was so vast that I could hardly notice the knot of phantoms in the foreground.

The promise—or the threat—of sunrise rested immovably up there.

One gets glimpses... of that which is ageless.

They came on steadily. I did not entirely like it.

‘There are going to be affecting scenes.’

‘But you murdered him.’

‘But he isn’t. I have told you, you will meet him soon. He sent you his love.’

‘I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began.’

‘Oh no. It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear.’

‘Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.’

‘Your feet will never grow hard enough to walk on our grass that way.’

‘Of course. Must I go into all that? I will tell you one thing to begin with. Murdering old Jack wasn’t the worst thing I did.’

‘There are no private affairs.’

‘Don’t refuse. You will never get there alone. And I am the one who was sent to you.’

We call it Hell.

You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

It’s all true, you know.

Will you, even now, repent and believe?

I can promise you none of these things.

Your thirst shall be quenched.

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.

You have gone far wrong.

Do you not even believe that He exists?

If the thirst of the Reason is really dead…can you, at least, still desire happiness?

I exulted. The noise, though gigantic, was like giants’ laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works.

The very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you.

Fool. Put it down. You cannot take it back.

It might as well have tried to tread down an anti-tank trap as to walk on them.

Here, after the first shock, my sensibility ‘took’ both as a well-built ship takes a huge wave.

It had come within ten yards of it.

He gave up the idea of two, he would take one, the largest one.

I could hardly help admiring this unhappy creature when I saw him rise staggering to his feet actually holding the smallest of the apples in his hands.

Stay here and learn to eat such apples.

Yet even so, inch by inch, still availing himself of every scrap of cover, he set out on his via dolorosa to the bus, carrying his torture.

‘That’s all propaganda,’ it said. ‘Of course there never was any question of our staying.'

‘You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass.'

‘I’m the sort of chap who likes to see things for himself.'

‘They’re all advertisement stunts. All run by the same people.'

‘You’ll always find the same old Ring.'

‘They’re just laughing at us.'

‘Anyway, who wants to be rescued? What the hell would there be to do here?’

‘It’s up to the Management to find something that doesn’t bore us, isn’t it?'

‘What would you say if you went to a hotel where the eggs were all bad...?’

‘Ah, you hadn’t thought of that? It hadn’t occurred to you that with the sort of water they have here every raindrop will make a hole in you, like a machine-gun bullet.'

‘But you need help,’ said the Solid One.

‘You can lean on me all the way. I can’t absolutely carry you, but you need have almost no weight on your own feet: and it will hurt less at every step.’

‘But why not?’

‘For infinite happiness,’ said the Spirit. ‘You can step out into it at any moment…’

‘An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it.’

‘Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.’

‘Friend,’ said the Spirit. ‘Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said the Spirit. ‘Come and try.’

‘Oh, I see. But we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived, you know. That’ll wear off. Just come out and try.’

‘You’ve no right to ask me to do a thing like that. It’s disgusting. I should never forgive myself if I did.’

‘Son,’ he said, ‘Your love—all love—is of inexpressible value to me.'

‘Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell.'

‘Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.'

‘No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.'

‘Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.'

‘Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell.'

‘The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven.'

‘Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”'.

‘But come! Ye are here to watch and listen. Lean on my arm and we will go for a little walk.’

‘The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.’

"But I don’t understand…" began the She-Spirit.

"Exactly," said the Ghost with a little laugh. "You never did. You always thought Robert could do no wrong."

"I forgive him as a Christian," said the Ghost. "But there are some things one can never forget."

"It was I who had to drive him every step of the way. He hadn’t a spark of ambition."

"You can’t believe the work I had getting him to agree to a bigger house, and then finding a house."

"If only he’d seen the fun of it all. If he’d been a different sort of man it would have been fun meeting him on the doorstep."

"It was perfect misery, Hilda. For by this time your wonderful Robert was turning into the sort of man who cares about nothing but food."

"I forced him to take exercise—that was really my chief reason for keeping a great Dane."

"I’ve done my duty by him, if ever a woman has."

"Give him back to me. Why should he have everything his own way?"

‘You need to be thickened up a bit.’

‘It wouldn’t have done. Not yet. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear you as you are at present.’

‘But the whole thickening treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake.’

‘No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein.’

‘There is no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.’

‘There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.’

‘Ah, but it’s cruel not to say it. They that know have grown afraid to speak.’

‘You’ll not forget that part of the story?’

‘If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty.’

‘What is a lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.’

'Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves.'

'Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength.'

'But now…you can set all that aside. Never think like that again. It is all over.'

'There are no miseries here.'

'I was in love. In love, do you understand? Yes, now I love truly.'

'What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.'

'I have asked you to forgive me. There was a little real love in it.'

'I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak.'

'You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.'

'It’s ridiculous for that doll to try to be impressive about death here. It just won’t work.'

‘Everything bids you stay.’

‘Joy was created to live always under that threat?’

‘Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?’

‘I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go.’

‘There is joy that cannot be shaken.’

‘Where is Frank? And who are you, Sir? I never knew you.’

‘It will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil.’

‘Aye. But the voyage was not mere locomotion.’

‘All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world.’

‘Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it.’

‘Is that the truth? Then is all that I have been seeing in this country false? These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts—were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?’

‘A dream? Then—then—am I not really here, Sir?’

‘It is not so good as that. The bitter drink of death is still before you. Ye are only dreaming.’

‘See ye make it very plain. Give no poor fool the pretext to think ye are claiming knowledge of what no mortal knows.’

‘Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.’

‘The morning! The morning!’ I cried, ‘I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.’

‘Ye saw the choices a bit more clearly than ye could see them on Earth: the lens was clearer.’

‘One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed—not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes.’

‘The vision of the chessmen had faded, and once more the quiet woods in the cool light before sunrise were about us.’

‘The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head.’