“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

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About C.S. Lewis

British author, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian

C. S. Lewis was a British author, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held posts in English literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis also wrote The Screwtape Letters and the Space Trilogy, along with Christian apologetic works such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain. His writing ranges from imaginative fiction to religious argument, and much of it reflects his interest in Christian belief and moral questions.

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