Quotes from Out of the Silent Planet

“The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back--if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“Bent creatures are full of fears”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmán, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“It is because they have no Oyarsa,' said one of the pupils.
It is because everyone of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,' said Augray.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“You are speaking...as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing... what you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“now that the very name "space" seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring in at every moment.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“He [The Bent One] has left you this way because a bent hnau can do more evil than a broken one.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“It was all there in that little disc-London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows consoled, of he knew not what and yet he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bass of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“Now that he was navigating, his celestial mood was shattered. Wild, animal thirst for life, mixed with homesick longing for the free airs and the sights and smells of earth-for grass and meat and beer and tea and the human voice-awoke in him.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“The stars in their courses were fighting against Weston.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“I don't believe your theory that "readers never notice that sort of thing." I'm sure I should.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge-the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“[Ransom] preferred to work as a volunteer rather than in admitted slavery: and he liked his cooking a good deal more than that of his companions.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“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 the subjects of Maleldil you would have peace. p. 140”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history—of war, slavery and prostitution. “It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of the pupils. “It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of the worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes--and here, with how many more! No: space was the wrong name.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“(Of the main character seeing a new world for the first time.) The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“Ransom was by now thoroughly frightened—not with the prosaic fright that a man suffers in a war, but with a heady, bounding kind of fear that was hardly distinguishable from his general excitement: he was poised on a sort of emotional watershed from which, he felt, he might at any moment pass either into delirious terror or into an ecstasy of joy.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“The mere presence of a human being, with its offer of at least some companionship, broke down the tension in which his nerves had long been resisting a bottomless dismay. pg. 24”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“At that moment he was unconscious of everything except his fear. He did not even know what he was afraid of: the fear itself possessed his whole mind, a formless, infinite misgiving. pg. 25”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

“The adventure was too high, its circumstance too solemn, for any emotion save a severe delight. pg. 31”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Out of the Silent Planet

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