# “Remember your fairy tales” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2009/08/12/remember-your-fairy-tales-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2009-08-12T23:19:20-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us
if we trust to them; it was not _in them_, it only came _through them_, and what
came through them was longing. These things– the beauty, the memory of our own past–
are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing
itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For
they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found,
the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy
tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And
you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the
evil enchantment of worldliness which has laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

–C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in _[The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060653205?tag=toletaupanre-20)_(
New York: Harper Collins, 1949/2001), 30-31.

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