C. S. Lewis Quotes

Friendship is...the sort of love one can imagine between angels.

You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.

Things never happen the same way twice.

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the 'first fruits,' the pioneer of life,' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so.

And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.

[Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self -will that we have been training ourselves into... It means killing part of yourself, under-going a kind of death.

When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

Child, that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Oh, the fruit is good, but they loath it ever after.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.

Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

In the name of the Fathers, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes-I mean Amen.

Before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair.

Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.

Human intellect is incurably abstract.

Daughter, I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall.

You Too? I thought I was the only one.

The command "Be ye prfect" is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and he is going to make good his words. He will make us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature...a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly.

A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.

There seems no plan because it is all plan.

It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.

You can't just go on being a good egg. You must either hatch or go bad!

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.

Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.

Jesus Christ did not say, 'Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.'

All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.

If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.

Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

God has infinite attention, infinite leisure to spare for each one of us. He doesn't have to take us in the line. You're as much alone with Him as if you were the only thing He'd ever created.

There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.

I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.

Jewel,' he said, 'what lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy.

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.

Hatred obscures all distinctions.

What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

If there ever was a time that nothing existed, then nothing would exist now

Man does not have a soul. He is a soul. He has a body.

Where, except in the present, can the eternal be met?

I prefer being honest to being 'honest to God.'