C. S. Lewis Quotes

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

I don't want him to live forever, and I know that he's not going to live forever whether I want him to or not.

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

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book [The Lord of the Rings] which will break your heart."

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.

That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.

Everything except God has some natural superior; everything except unformed matter has some natural inferior.

Because God created the Natural - invented it out of His love and artistry - it demands our reverence.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, the first step is to realize one is proud. Nothing can be done before it.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.

God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

The value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.

When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.

A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. It was hardly a tune. But it was beyond comparison, the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

When golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift?

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.

Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest places.

All the time the joke is that the word "mine" in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either [Satan] or God will say "mine" of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.

Jesus produced mainly three effects: hatred, terror, adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this morning early. For various reasons, not in themselves at all mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had been for many weeks. ... And suddenly, at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting would be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one to use those words. It was as though the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier.

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

One always feel better when one has made up one's mind.

Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night —little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.

Certainly, Lu. Whatever you like,' said Peter unexpectedly. This was encouraging, but as Peter instantly rolled round and went to sleep again it wasn't much use.

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

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.

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.

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

For the church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.

The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.

I have often repented of speech but hardly ever of silence.

The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

We know we are sinners, it does not follow that we are saved.

Earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy.

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is oneself. And yet one can't change that either-only ask Our Lord to do so.