My Selection — The Horse and His Boy
By C.S. Lewis
I loved reading the entire Narnia series to my children when they were young — but this one was my favourite. Although the stories have animals and mystical creatures in them, Lewis has interwoven deep spiritual lessons that stay with you a long time. I last read this book over 20 years ago and these favourite quotes still stick with me to this day.
The following quotes are all discussion between a talking horse and his boy Shasta (an escaped slave boy he picked up on his journey) or between the wise Lion and the boy.
“Can You Fall?”
“In other words,” [the horse] 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?”
I feel like we could accomplish anything if we were good at falling. All the great entrepreneurs say this — that they have only succeeded because they were willing to fail so many times.
These days, I seriously look at the strange things that keep me from “getting back on the horse” or even getting on the horse at all. I consider the fear of what others would think, the need to be…
