On ‘Being in Love’

My view of Being-in-love is that (like everything except God and the Devil) it is better than some things and worse than others. Thus it comes in my scale of values higher than lust, selfishness, or frigidity, but lower than charity or constancy — in fact about on a level with friendship. Like everything (except God and the Devil) it therefore is sometimes opposed to things lower than itself and — in that situation — good: sometimes to things higher than itself and in that situation — bad. Thus Being-in-love is a better motive for marriage than, say, worldly advancement: but the intention to obey God’s will by entering into an indissoluble partnership in all virtue and mutual charity for the preservation of chastity and the admission of new souls to the chance of eternal life is better even than Being-in-love.

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“Letter to Daphne Harwood, 06 March 1942,” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. II, 510-11.