C. S. Lewis Quotes

1,151 Sourced Quotes

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

C. S. Lewis
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

C. S. Lewis
Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.

C. S. Lewis
The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.

C. S. Lewis
The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

C. S. Lewis
The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave us free will.

C. S. Lewis
The Intelligentsia (scientists apart) are losing all touch with, and all influence over, nearly the whole human race. Our most esteemed poets and critics are read by our most esteemed critics and poets (who don't usually like them much) and nobody else takes any notice. An increasing number of highly literate people simply ignore what the 'Highbrows' are doing. It says nothing to them. The Highbrows in return ignore and insult them.

C. S. Lewis
Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments one following another...Ten-thirty— and every other moment from the beginning of the world—is always Present for Him. If you like to put it this way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

C. S. Lewis
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
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

C. S. Lewis
You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

C. S. Lewis
We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

C. S. Lewis
Well!' said Puddleglum, rubbing his hands. 'This is just what I needed. If these chaps don't teach me to take a serious view of life, I don't know what will.

C. S. Lewis
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

C. S. Lewis
"Milton was right…" The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven." There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery…

C. S. Lewis
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

C. S. Lewis
The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

C. S. Lewis
The only people who object to escapism are jailers.

C. S. Lewis
Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.

C. S. Lewis
Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.

C. S. Lewis
All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.

C. S. Lewis
'God' said the Ghost, glancing around the landscape.

C. S. Lewis
This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there's a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.

C. S. Lewis
I daren't come and drink," said Jill. Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer."I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." There is no other stream," said the Lion.

C. S. Lewis
The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.

C. S. Lewis
Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?

C. S. Lewis
And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and, oh, gloriously she did) it was for another's sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes.

C. S. Lewis
No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.

C. S. Lewis
There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.

C. S. Lewis
The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.

C. S. Lewis