767 Quotes by C. S. Lewis (Page 3 of 6)

Devils are depicted with bats' wings and good angels with birds' wings, not because anyone holds that moral deterioration would be likely to turn feathers into membrane, but because most men like birds better than bats.

The most intense joy, lies not in the having, but in the desire, Delight that never fades, bliss that is eternal, Is only your, when what you most desire, is just out of reach...Anthony Hopkins, from the movie Shadowlands, where he plays C.S. Lewis.

If we continue to make moral judgements (and whatever we say shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of nature.

Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements.

The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.

Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.

Read and Re-Read -- Re-reading, we always find a new book.

I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

That one small noise brought back the old days to the children's minds more than anything that had happened yet. All the battles and hunts and feasts came rushing into their heads together.

Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.

Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.

And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.

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.

If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most, or else just silly.

Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you!

Dearest Daughter. I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.

I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now... Come further up, come further in!

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere opiate of the people have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean More people died don't say Mortality rose.

When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered and refused for your ultimate good.

We read to know we are not alone.

You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.

All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only beloved who will never pass away.

Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!

Afflictions are... if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ.

Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

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

No interviews without appointments except between nine and ten p.m. on second Saturdays.

The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.

The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.

Catch a man at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, By jove, I'm being humble, and almost immediately pride -- pride at his own humility -- will appear.

You can't get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.

Don't you mind, said Puddleglum. There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan; and he was there when the giant king caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that would come of them; including this.

Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

Am I to understand,' said Reepicheep to Lucy after a long stare at Eustace, 'That this singularly discourteous person is under your Majesty's protection? Because, if not.

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.

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.

Friendship is born at that moment when a single particular person claims to a different: 'What! You far too? I assumed I was the only real one particular.

So many things -- nay every real thing -- is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.

The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to that dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing has yet been done.

An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.

The idea which...shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience.

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

We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument...Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.

Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right.

Joy is the serious business of heaven. Our merriment must be between people who take each other seriously.

It is in their 'good' characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self- revelations.

Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.

And a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.

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

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.

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

The proper motto is not Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever, but Be good sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.

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.

Humility is self-forgetfulness.

I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.

Through pride the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every vice, it's the complete anti-God state of mind.

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.

It is always the novice who exaggerates.

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

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

Prosperity knits a man to the world.

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they 'own' their bodies--those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to; the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense of injury. (senior devil speaking).

Courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years into domestic hatred.

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand.

I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.

The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary.

When He God talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all--and more amusing.

There might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death.

The old field of space, time, matter, and the senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field: God is not.

There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was 'the sort of person who is always snooping around to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.'

You can't go against the grain of the universe and not expect to get splinters.

Of course, we are to pray for spiritual awakening, and in various ways we can do something toward it. But we must remember that neither Paul nor Apollos gives the increase.

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.

The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination.

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).

As Christians we are tempted to make unnecessary concessions to those outside the faith. We give in too much. Now, I don't mean that we should run the risk of making a nuisance of ourselves by witnessing at improper times, but there comes a time when we must show that we disagree.

The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that's new to him.

Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done.

Joy is the serious business of heaven.

All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.

Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.

True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty.

The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words 'true' or 'false'.

Every poem can be considered in two ways -- as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.

No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly; you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true; you've been disappointed so often before.

In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving.

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.

Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.

Post-Christian man is not the same as Pre-Christian man. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-be and a spouse lost.

It is very true. But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.

In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung.

No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.

A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible.

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.

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.

No more I do, your Majesty. But what's that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here.

We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.

Please,' she said, 'You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd rather be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.

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

You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.

Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together. If the voice within us does not say this it is not the voice of Eros.

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

In worship, God imparts himself to us.

We only learn to behave ourselves in the presence of God.

Puddleglum's my name. But it doesn't matter if you forget it. I can always tell you again.

We can conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of abuse of free will by His creatures: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when used as a weapon... But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and therefore, freedom of the will would be void.

Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?

It is a happy moment when our desire crosses with the will of Heavenly Father.

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

Every contact you make with everyone you meet will help them or hinder them on their journey to heaven.

It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere.

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

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.