C. S. Lewis: Quotes by Clive Staples 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

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done… ~C. S. Lewis

Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it. ~C. S. Lewis

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. ~C. S. Lewis

A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. ~C. S. Lewis

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. ~C. S. Lewis

Whenever you find a man who says he doesn’t believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. ~C. S. Lewis

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. ~C. S. Lewis

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. ~C. S. Lewis

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it 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

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. ~C. S. Lewis

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

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. ~C. S. Lewis

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason. ~C. S. Lewis

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~C. S. Lewis

If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. ~C. S. Lewis

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~C. S. Lewis

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed. ~C. S. Lewis

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.” ~C. S. Lewis

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. ~C. S. Lewis

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. ~C. S. Lewis

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. ~C. S. Lewis

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. ~C. S. Lewis

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. ~C. S. Lewis

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. ~C. S. Lewis

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. ~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

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. ~C. S. Lewis

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. ~C. S. Lewis

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely 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. ~C. S. Lewis

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. ~C. S. Lewis

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. ~C. S. Lewis

I gave in, and admitted that God was God. ~C. S. Lewis

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. ~C. S. Lewis

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy. ~C. S. Lewis

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. ~C. S. Lewis

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. ~C. S. Lewis

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. ~C. S. Lewis

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature. ~C. S. Lewis

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. ~C. S. Lewis

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one. ~C. S. Lewis

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C. S. Lewis

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ. ~C. S. Lewis

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. ~C. S. Lewis

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. ~C. S. Lewis

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. ~C. S. Lewis

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. ~C. S. Lewis

The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. ~C. S. Lewis

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. ~C. S. Lewis

Joy is the serious business of Heaven. ~C. S. Lewis

God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God. ~C. S. Lewis

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~C. S. Lewis

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

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good. ~C. S. Lewis

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

Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair. ~C. S. Lewis

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one. ~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 trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. ~C. S. Lewis

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

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

History is a story written by the finger of God. ~C. S. Lewis

Badness is only spoiled goodness. ~C. S. Lewis

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. ~C. S. Lewis

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it. ~C. S. Lewis

And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger. ~C. S. Lewis

The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle. ~C. S. Lewis

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? ~C. S. Lewis

The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. ~C. S. Lewis

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

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