C. S. Lewis famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should we not look forward to the arrival?
-- C. S. Lewis -
No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth'.
-- C. S. Lewis -
There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.
-- C. S. Lewis -
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one.
-- C. S. Lewis -
A man whose life has been transformed by Christ cannot help but have his worldview show through.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden...A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved although it does tell us a good deal about those who hold it.
-- C. S. Lewis -
History is a story written by the finger of God.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.
-- C. S. Lewis -
You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men - things at once rational and animal.
-- C. S. Lewis -
I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless he sees that it is good for him to wait.
-- C. S. Lewis -
In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The world was made partly that there may be prayer; partly that our prayers might be answered.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Until you have given up yourself to Him, you will not have a real self.
-- C. S. Lewis -
God, in the end, gives people what they most want, including freedom from himself. What could be more fair?
-- C. S. Lewis -
A little lie is like a little pregnancy it doesn't take long before everyone knows.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?
-- C. S. Lewis -
In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person's place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.
-- C. S. Lewis -
For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.
-- C. S. Lewis -
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they 'own' their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!
-- C. S. Lewis -
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
-- C. S. Lewis -
It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' [everything]. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
-- C. S. Lewis -
For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.
-- C. S. Lewis -
God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.
-- C. S. Lewis -
How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs
-- C. S. Lewis -
Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The human mind is generally far more eager to praise or dispraise than it is to describe and define.
-- C. S. Lewis -
I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state, but a process. It needs not a map, but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday and then find on Wednesday that it hasn't stayed put and all has to be done over again.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves . . . We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own . . . We demand windows.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that god loves man and for his sake became man and died.
-- C. S. Lewis -
I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The Glory of God, and, as our only means of glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life.
-- C. S. Lewis -
When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.
-- C. S. Lewis -
I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.
-- C. S. Lewis -
To be ignorant and simple now-not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground-would be to throw down our weapons and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.
-- C. S. Lewis -
God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. No belief will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.
-- C. S. Lewis -
When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.
-- C. S. Lewis -
An author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.
-- C. S. Lewis -
When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.
-- C. S. Lewis -
It's not a question of God 'sending' us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
-- C. S. Lewis -
I#pray because the need flows out of me all the time-walking and sleeping. It does not change #‎ God - it changes me.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.
-- C. S. Lewis -
You ask ‘for what’ God wants you. Isn’t the primary answer that He wants you. We’re not told that the lost sheep was sought out for anything except itself [Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7]. Of course, He may have a special job for you: and the certain job is that of becoming more and more His.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God.
-- C. S. Lewis -
God doesn't want something from us. He simply wants us.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Everything that is not eternal is worthless in eternity.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The more pride we have, the more other people’s pride irritates us
-- C. S. Lewis -
When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.
-- C. S. Lewis -
When we are wholly His we will be more ourselves than ever.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination
-- C. S. Lewis -
The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.
-- C. S. Lewis -
All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it, tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.'
-- C. S. Lewis -
A man can't be always defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in
-- C. S. Lewis -
Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.
-- C. S. Lewis -
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.
-- C. S. Lewis -
What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
-- C. S. Lewis -
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
-- C. S. Lewis -
A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women.
-- C. S. Lewis
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