C. S. Lewis Quotes

1,151 Sourced Quotes

What can you ever really know of other people's souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know and this is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

C. S. Lewis
And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.

C. S. Lewis
Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

C. S. Lewis
There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

C. S. Lewis
And then one babbles — 'if only I could bear it, or the worst of it, or any of it, instead of her.' But one can't tell how serious that bid is, for nothing is staked on it. If it suddenly became a real possibility, then, for the first time, we should discover how seriously we had meant it. But is it ever allowed?
It was allowed to One, we are told, and I find I can now believe again, that He has done vicariously whatever can be done. He replies to our babble, 'you cannot and dare not. I could and dared.'

C. S. Lewis
The sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell.

C. S. Lewis
I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books.

C. S. Lewis
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.

C. S. Lewis
When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!

C. S. Lewis
If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.

C. S. Lewis
In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.

C. S. Lewis
I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.

C. S. Lewis
You're a mere chick. I remember you when you were a egg. Don't come trying to teach me, sir. Crabs and crumpets!

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

C. S. Lewis
Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be vulgarity - like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.

C. S. Lewis
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

C. S. Lewis
But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder.

C. S. Lewis
'Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?'

C. S. Lewis
The Christians say that God has done miracles. The modern world, even when it believes in God, and even when it has see the defenselessness of nature, does not. It thinks God would not do that sort of thing.

C. S. Lewis
I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

C. S. Lewis
"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."

C. S. Lewis
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

C. S. Lewis
Please,' she said, 'You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd rather be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.

C. S. Lewis
A blessed spirit is a mould ever more and more patient of the bright metal poured into it, a body ever more completely uncovered to the meridian blaze of the spiritual sun.

C. S. Lewis
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.

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

C. S. Lewis
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
What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?

C. S. Lewis
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

C. S. Lewis