If you’re unfamiliar with Gavin Aung’s Zen Pencils, you’re in for a treat. He illustrates quotations he finds throughout the world’s spiritual traditions. Here Gavin takes the heart of something C. S. Lewis wrote in his study the Four Loves.

The full quotation follows the cartoon.

“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, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

The cartoon is reproduced here with permission of the artist.