C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (1952)

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If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.

C. S. Lewis
Everyone who believes in God at all believes that he knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow.

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.'

C. S. Lewis
Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.

C. S. Lewis
We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.

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 do not see into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge.

C. S. Lewis
When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only person in the world.

C. S. Lewis
Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you - the part that chooses - into something a little different than what it was before. Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.

C. S. Lewis
Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever.

C. S. Lewis
If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing-rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.

C. S. Lewis
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.

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
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
God is love, and that love works through men-especially through the whole community of Christians.

C. S. Lewis
Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.

C. S. Lewis
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
The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back to the simple principles, which we're so anxious not to see.

C. S. Lewis
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
The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one.

C. S. Lewis
As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head.

C. S. Lewis
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

C. S. Lewis
Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

C. S. Lewis
Christian principles are, admittedly, stricter than the others; but then we think you will get help towards obeying them which you will not get towards obeying the others.

C. S. Lewis
A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be worth creating.

C. S. Lewis
The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus in a woman's body.

C. S. Lewis
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

C. S. Lewis
Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

C. S. Lewis
Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.

C. S. Lewis
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis