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Quotes from Lewis' Space Trilogy Book 1: Out of the Silent Planet

C S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet. The Bodley Head: London, 1938. 

[Available as a free ebook for those in countries where it is out of copyright and in the public domain (e.g. Canada and the UK).] 

Lewis' space trilogy is weird and no mistake. I've never read anything like it. A bizarre collision of different genres. It's not perfect but Lewis is great at making us look at familiar things in unfamiliar (and often much more biblical) ways. There are incredibly perceptive insights into human nature, psychological experience and cultural trends. There is a powerful biblical vision of reality in its most cosmic wide lens. The imaginative spaces it opens up are remarkable and sometimes breathtaking. 

So here are 8 quotes from book 1 (there are going to be a lot more for the next two books because this trilogy builds and gets better and better and increasingly explicitly theological):


"he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are." (chapter 7, the best definition of 'heuristic' I've come across - we need at least working definitions of things, some sort of framework, some sort of teacher or guide to point things out)

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered."
(chapter 12)

"everything.. was changed. ...Then all had been whimpering, unanalysed, self-nourishing, self-consuming dismay. Now, in the clear light of an accepted duty, he felt fear indeed, but with it a sober sense of confidence in himself and in the world, and even an element of pleasure."
(chapter 14, the power and joy of clearly defined duty to perform)

"a world is not made to last for ever, much less a race; that is not [the Creator]’s way"
(chapter 16)

"There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves?"
(chapter 16, instead there must be rule by higher order being)

"‘I see now how the lord of the silent world [i.e. Satan] has bent you. There are laws that all [sentient beings] know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little, blind [god] in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you can give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey. Do you know why he has done this?’
‘Me think no such person—me wise, new man—no believe all that old talk.’
‘I will tell you. He has left you this one because a bent [man] can do more evil than a broken one.’"
(chapter 20, how nationalism or humanism, when made the only and controlling virtue, becomes more dangerous than a simple greed - the ideologue is capable of more evil than the thief)

"The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of [the Creator] you would have peace."
(chapter 20)

"His brain reeled at the thought of the true population of the universe, the three-dimensional infinitude of their territory, and the unchronicled æons of their past; but his heart became steadier than it had ever been."
(chapter 21, cf. the 100 million angels of Re. 5:11, note the brain reeling and the heart steadied)

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