C. S. Lewis Quotes

1,151 Sourced Quotes

Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

C. S. Lewis
Of Lord of the Rings:
Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart.

C. S. Lewis
But perhaps I lack the gift. I see I've described her as being like a sword. That's true as far as it goes. But utterly inadequate by itself, and misleading. I ought to have said 'But also like a garden. Like a nest of gardens, wall within wall, hedge within hedge, more secret, more full of fragrant and fertile life, the further you explore.'
And then, of her, and every created thing I praise, I should say 'in some way, in its unique way, like Him who made it.'
Thus up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. to the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful.

C. S. Lewis
The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.

C. S. Lewis
It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

C. S. Lewis
The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.

C. S. Lewis
The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that's new to him.

C. S. Lewis
Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!') In heavens name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.

C. S. Lewis
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose that you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it? … Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.

C. S. Lewis
What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

C. S. Lewis
Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.

C. S. Lewis
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.

C. S. Lewis
Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

C. S. Lewis
The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

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

C. S. Lewis
Savage – There is only one way fit for a man – Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.

C. S. Lewis
Enough had been thought, and said, and felt, and imagined. It was about time that something should be done.

C. S. Lewis
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

C. S. Lewis
They were really getting quite fond of their strange pet and hoped that Aslan would allow them to keep it. The cleverer ones were quite sure by now that at least some of the noises which came out of his mouth had a meaning. They christened him Brandy because he made that noise so often.

C. S. Lewis
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

C. S. Lewis
Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

C. S. Lewis
I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.

C. S. Lewis
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

C. S. Lewis
I want to have her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do all over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn't Lazarus the rawer deal?

C. S. Lewis
So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. But suppose God became a man... He could surrender His will, suffer and die, because He was a man...

C. S. Lewis
Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.

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

C. S. Lewis
If you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact. This is the inductive method.

C. S. Lewis
Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.

C. S. Lewis
We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us.

C. S. Lewis