This post concludes a week of C.S. Lewis quotes to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of His passing on November 22, 1963. In case you were wondering why Narnia had not appeared yet, it's because I was saving it for last. There are so, so many beloved quotes I could share from The Chronicles of Narnia, but right now I'm drawn to bits from The Last Battle. That, for me, is the most hopeful of the books. It does not shy away from the confusion, pain, and embattlement of life but extends a vision of a future so glorious that the pain will be worth it. In that way, it dovetails with Friday's quote from The Weight of Glory.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:
"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"
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[Aslan says,] "The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
~C.S. Lewis, The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, 520, 524 {affiliate link}
