C. S. Lewis: 10 quotes on his birthday

C. S. Lewis, author of bestselling children’s series "The Chronicles of Narnia," was born on Nov. 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland. Ten years later, his somewhat idyllic childhood ended when his mother died and he was sent away to a boarding school in England. In 1916 Lewis began studying at University College, the oldest college at Oxford University. Lewis took time off from school in order to serve in World War I and returned to college in 1918. He graduated at the top of his class and began teaching English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he remained for 29 years. In addition to teaching, Lewis wrote a number of books on religious and literary topics. "The Allegory of Love" (1936) took a new look at love in medieval literature, and his preface to Milton’s "Paradise Lost"  remains to this day a central piece of literary criticism. In addition to "The Chronicles of Narnia," Lewis wrote a science fiction series called the “Space Trilogy,” a work that was influenced by his close friend J. R. Tolkien’s "The Hobbit." Lewis’s works have been translated into over 30 languages and have sold millions of copies to this day. 

1. Love

Photo: public domain

"This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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