Notes/Quotes From C.S Lewis: The Great Divorce

No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it-- no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.
-George MacDonald

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.
-CSL

Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.
-CSL

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their resue 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.
-CSL

Don't you remember on Earth-- there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? 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.
-CSL

Every one of us lives only to journey further and further....And it would be no use to come (closer to the one whom you would try to save) even if it were possible. The sane would do not good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.
-CSL

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." All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell.
-CSL

Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer (to heaven) than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.
-CSL

There's something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
-CSL

'Get back! You're burning me. How can I tell you to kill (my particular pet sin)? You'd kill me if you did.'
'It is not so.'
'Why, you're hurting me now.'
'I never said it wouldn't hurt you. I said it wouldn't kill you.'
-CSL

Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light.
-CSL

What needs could I have (said she) now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. 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.
-CSL

Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know tha tnow. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?
-CSL

If it would help you and if it were possible I would go down with you into Hell: but you cannot bring Hell into me.... I cannot love a lie. I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go.
-CSL

It must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.
-CSL

'I see,' said I at last. 'She couldn't fit into Hell.'
He nodded. 'There's not room for her,' he said. 'Hell could not open its mouth wide enough.'
'And she couldn't make herself smaller?-- like Alice, you know.'
'Nothing like small enough For a damned soul is nearly n othing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.'
-CSL

Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom.
-CSL

The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time's lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?
-CSL

'It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' 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. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of my Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!' I cried, 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.' But it was too late. The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head.
-CSL