C. S. Lewis Quotes

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.

I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else

The most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action.

All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best.

When we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.

For He (God) seems to do nothing of himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.

I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it.

God is the food our spirits were designed to feed on.

One must never be either content with, or impatient with, oneself.

As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.

My friendship you shall have, leanred Man," piped Reepicheep. "And any Dwarf--or Giant---in the army who does not give you good language shall have my sword to reckon with.

Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it's a sign that you've got an extraordinary destiny--something greater than you could've imagined.

I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.

Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved.

If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about...)

Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.

The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can't supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.

You can give the Devil too much or too little attention.

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.

I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.

She stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows. A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all around it. And then --Oh Joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.

Friends are like coals in a fire - together, they glow; apart, they grow cold.

When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.

The happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to him.

We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

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

If we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.

It's not a question of God 'sending' us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.

God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.

I am in love and out of it I will not go.

To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator.

A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.

Enemy occupied territory is what the world is.

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

I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous.

The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some different event.

Evil comes from the ABUSE of free will

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.