Quote Location

[Guest]

Hi can anyone tell me where this quote comes from?

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

[Sven]

[Leslie]

It comes from The Four Loves, the chapter entitled "Charity" , page 111 in my paperback Fount edition.

[Karen]

[Leslie]

[Sven]

[Guest]

[heatherita]

The line "to love is to be vulnerable" actually comes from the beginning of the paragraph rather than the end. C.S. Lewis wrote (starting with that line and going to the end of the paragraph:

". . . To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, inpenitrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." (C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves [the chapter on Charity])
[/i]

[Sven]