C. S. Lewis famous quotes

Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Spiritual #Men

The present is the only time in which any duty may be done or grace received.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Time #Grace #Done

If He who in Himself can lack nothing, chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Needs #Needed

The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Made

The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Rewards #Given

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Humility #Perfect #Modesty

If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.
-- C. S. Lewis

#May #Satisfied

When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Perfect #Firsts #Glory

Safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Class #Safety #Honest

The modern idea of a Great Man is one who stands at the lonely extremity of some single line of development--
-- C. S. Lewis

#Lonely #Men #Ideas

The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Care #Speak

Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?
-- C. S. Lewis

#Hurt #Government #Shoes

It is in their 'good' characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self- revelations.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Character #Self #Novelists

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Animal #Emotion #Aids

As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.'
-- C. S. Lewis

#Kings #Mean #Men

You have gone into the Temple...and found Him, as always, there.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Gone #Temples #Found

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Doubt #Modern

When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Sacrifice #Men #Self

No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Father #Light #Done

The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Running #Past #Land

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
-- C. S. Lewis

#May #Moral #Busybodies

Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Lovely #Certain

The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Way #Satisfaction #Pleasure

So many things--nay every real thing--is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Humble #Be Humble

If there is equality it is in His love, not in us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#His Love

Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many...
-- C. S. Lewis

#Democratic

Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Thinking #Democracy

Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Children #Important #Distraction

Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want
-- C. S. Lewis

#Thinking #Giving #Needs

Put first things first and second things are thrown in. Put second things first and you lose both first and second things.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Firsts #Put First Things First #Thrown

Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says; we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Party #Views #Order

One must never be either content with, or impatient with, oneself.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Impatient #Oneself

Evil comes from the ABUSE of free will
-- C. S. Lewis

#Evil #Abuse #Free Will

Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Mean #People

We do not want to merely “see” beauty. We want to be united with it, to receive it into ourselves, to become part of it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Want #United

The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Scotch #Forever

Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Needs #Arms

Jesus Christ did not say, 'Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.'
-- C. S. Lewis

#Jesus #Jesus Christ #World

The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Animal #Men #Doe

The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Mourn #Remains

I'd sooner live among people who don't cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Cheating #People #Cards

There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Talking #Use #Done

A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Knowing #Understanding

The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...
-- C. S. Lewis

#Beautiful #Sight #Ideas

Regarding the debate about faith and works: It's like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Wisdom #Important #Asking

It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Wisdom #Tired #Hungry

The continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Christian #Thinking

The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the 'first fruits,' the pioneer of life,' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Kings #Life Changing #Men

...we sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species - preference for man simply because we are men - is not sentiment, then what is?
-- C. S. Lewis

#Loyalty #Sacrifice #Animal

You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Eggs #Ordinary #Goes On

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Trying #Unions #Kind

And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Cutting #Errors #Race

If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding. If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God, but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Humility #Heart #Omnipotence

True faith is never found alone; it is accompanied by expectation.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Expectations #Found

Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest places.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Race #Silence #Achievement

We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way (there is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Art #Order #Looks

We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Church #Together #Christianity

Good and evil increase at compound interest. That's why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Evil #Decision #Littles

You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Trying

The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Way

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Pain #Speak #Pleasure

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.'
-- C. S. Lewis

#Giving #Want #Christ

We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are rebels who must lay down our arms.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Rebel #Arms #Imperfect

You must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best
-- C. S. Lewis

#Doors #Asking #Please

The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Growing Up #Growing #Gains

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christianity #Easier #Making Up

Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Judging

Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier could give some advice.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Thinking #Giving #Advice

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Ideas #Doe

If the Church is not Making Disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Church #Waste #Wasting Time

If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?
-- C. S. Lewis

#Prayer #Silly #Granted

The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Forever #Lost #Enjoy

What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Doe

Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Father #Mistake #Home

If Christianity is only one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Advice #Good Advice #Christianity

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Needs #Christ

We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Support #Causes

To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love You #Worship #Should

Selfishness has never been admired.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Selfishness

Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Humility #Personality #Unity

The enemy will not see you vanish into God's company without an effort to reclaim you.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Effort #Enemy #Company

When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Feelings #Friendly #Being The Best

The very man who has argued you down, will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Years #Sometimes

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Ideas #Dangerous

Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love Is #Doe #Reciprocity

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Reality #Doe #Add

The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Past #Men #Heaven

If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Desire #World #Wonder

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Teacher #Pride

There seems to be hardly any one among my acquaintance from whom I have not learned.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Acquaintance

Love...is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Love You #Love Is

Something deep in the human heart breaks at the thought of a life of mediocrity.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Heart #Mediocrity #Break

If conversion makes no improvements in a man's outward actions then I think his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Thinking #Action

Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Want

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Evil #Giving #Joy

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Determination #Feelings #Doe

We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
-- C. S. Lewis

#People #Behaviour #Kind

In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Enjoy #Glorify

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Sex #Ambition #Joy

Your place in Heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Heaven #Made