Quotes from The Horse and His Boy

“Do not dare not to dare.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins."
"It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did." And he looked very thoughtful.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead like.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Dearest Daughter. I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“It is very true. But even a traitor may mend. I have known one who did.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Please,' she said, 'You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd rather be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“See the bear in his own den before you judge of his conditions.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion.

"Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Who are you?'
One who has waited long for you to speak.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Come, live with me and you'll know me.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“The bolt of Tash falls from above!'
'Does it ever get caught on a hook halfway?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“The harder you tried not to think, the more you thought.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Who are you?” asked Shasta.

“Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“In other words," it continued, "you can't ride. That's a drawback. I'll have to teach you as we go along. If you can't ride, can you fall?"
"I suppose anyone can fall," said Shasta.
"I mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“I don't want him to live forever, and I know that he's not going to live forever whether I want him to or not.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“My good Horse," said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. "My good Horse, you've lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don't put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You're not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn't follow that you'll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you're nobody very special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Father! Can I box him? Please!”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“And certainly both Horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could; which is not quite the same thing.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

“It is very true,” said Edmund. “But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.” And he looked very thoughtful.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Horse and His Boy

About the author

Popular quotes

“Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as “brain chatter.” It is that voice reminding you to pick up bananas on your way home and that calculating intelligence that knows when you have to do your laundry. There is vast individual variation in the speed at which our minds function. For some, our dialogue of brain chatter runs so fast that we can barely keep up with what we are thinking. Others of us think in language so slowly that it takes a long time for us to comprehend. Still others of us have a problem retaining our focus and concentration long enough to act on our thoughts. These variations in normal processing stem back to our brain cells and how each brain is intrinsically wired.”
― Jill Bolte Taylor, quote from My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

“The discovery of a corpse's head on campus has worked as an expedient in getting the administrative staff to work before ten, despite the impending blizzard.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

“But I never forgot Shosha. I dreamed of her at night. In my dreams she was both dead and alive. I played with her in a garden which was also a cemetery. Dead girls joined us there, wearing garments that were ornate shrouds. They danced in circles and sang songs. They swung, skated, occasionally hovered in the air. The birds there were different from any I knew. They were as big as eagles, as colorful as parrots. They spoke Yiddish. From the thickets surrounding the garden, beasts with human faces showed themselves. Shosha was at home in this garden, and instead of my pointing out and explaining to her as I had done in the past, she revealed to me things I hadn't known and whispered secrets in my ear. Her hair had grown long enough to reach her loins, and her flesh glowed like mother-of-pearl. I always awoke from this dream with a sweet taste in my mouth and the impression that Shosha was on longer living.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, quote from Shosha

“The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. “This . . . mermaid,” he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. “The one who sang to the king at night.” His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn’t tell if anyone but me could hear. “How . . .” he began. “How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?”
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
“Did she despise him,” the Sultan asked, “for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?”
“No, my lord,” I said softly. “She loved him.”
“Do you swear it?” He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
“Yes, my lord. She told me—” I stopped, corrected myself. “She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king—the merman king, my lord—she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him—because of the things you just said, my lord—the queen said, ‘I’m not ashamed of loving him. There’s nothing wrong with loving someone. It’s hating—that’s what’s wrong.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner

“...I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world.”
― Daniel Mendelsohn, quote from The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.