Suprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis

"Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have a stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing." pg.72

"Twilight of the Gods and the distance of my own past Joy, both unattainable, flowed together into a single, undendurable sense of desire and loss, which suddenley became one with the loss of the whole experience, which, as I now stared round the dusty schoolroom like a man recovering from unconsciousness, had already vanished, had eluded me at the very moment when I could first say It is. And at once I knew(with fatal knowledge) that to "have it again" was the supreme and only important object of desire." pg.73