“The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
The Magician's Nephew (1955), Ch. 10: The First Joke and Other Matters
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)
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Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963Related quotes

“If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?”
Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 39 (p. 404)

Within You Without You, from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Lyrics
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: We can justify the list we will submit on several grounds. First, many of these questions have literally been asked by children and adolescents when they are permitted to respond freely to the challenge of "What's Worth Knowing?" Second, some of these questions are based on careful listening to students, even though they were not at the time asking questions. Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't. (An old aphorism describing this process goes: Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.) In other cases they do this because they do not know how to ask certain kinds of questions. In any event, a simple translation of their declarative utterances will sometimes produce a great variety of deeply felt questions.

“Either don't try at all or make damned sure you succeed.”
Aut non rem temptes aut perfice.
Book I, line 389 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

"Book on African America Quotes Pg 178 Cicely Tyson https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=NfdBrOgz4swC&pg=PA178&dq=Challenges+make+you+discover+the+things+about+yourself+that+you+never+knew

“The more you succeed in making out of yourself, the more bitter a thing it is to have to die.”
Source: The Book of Skulls (1972), Chapter 15 (p. 62)