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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“I have discovered, passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them. This becomes clearer and clearer. It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow - getting into my morning bath is usually one of them - that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right. This is good and tonic.”

FeelsMindDoeMomentsRealityGriefMorningCuttingWorstSorrowMiseryPassionateLinksBathsOthernessWorst Moments
Book:A Grief Observed
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“You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better - the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read.”

IfsLoveFirstsDreamHandsWould BeAsksPoorBusinessFoolConversationExperiencePersonal ExperiencesBeen In LoveAustenBronteSpenserFirst Hand Experience
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“And in truth (as I now see) I had the wish to put off my journey as long as I could. Not for any peril or labour it might cost; but because I could see nothing in the whole world for me to do once it was accomplished. AS long as this act lay before me, there was, as it were, some barrier between me and the dead desert which the rest of my life must be.”

WorldLongWholeMightWishJourneyCostLaysWhole WorldDesertAccomplishedLabourBarriersPerilMy Journey
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed bu increased.”

ShouldFirstsStatesMovingLove YouWorshipCreatorGod LoveExpensesShould IWorship God
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?" Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you're there.”

PeopleWorldMeanThreeWalksBallsExcitingRoundsTalesFairyFairy TaleUpside DownRound World
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“A man's physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.”

ThinkingMenWorldWayBelieveMayDoeBodyDesireDiesWishEnjoyRaceProveEatingHungerBreadSubstanceParadiseStarvationIndication
Book:Weight of Glory
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“And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper?”

ShouldKindDoeMovingDoorsParticularPridePleaseTasteConscienceAskingMerePaintDuesDoctrineHolinessDislikeKeepersReluctanceTrue Ones
Book:Mere Christianity
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“I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.”

PeopleThinkingWellsArtSufferingEvilCan DoJusticeResultsChristianityAchieveUniversalTradePrisonSlaveObjectivesReformFactoriesAssuranceAbolitionTacklingSlave TradeTuberculosisPrison Reform
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.”

PeopleMenWorldSelfChristianTalkingMoralVirtueImagineHumilityPrideOppositesFaultsVicesGuiltyUnconsciousImagine ThatConceitLoathe
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.”

PeopleMenWantNeedsUseCoursesCan DoPerfectJourneyDutyHabitTasteLegsGod LoveRight ThingEtcSubstitutesIdioticCrutchesPerfect Man
Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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“To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

RealSeemsArtistFatherImpossibleDivineSonPleaseGloryWeightDelightBurdenIngredientsOur ThoughtsDelighted
Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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“And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.”

ShouldMayMadeSoulSelfEnoughMomentsHappensLastsBeliefPerfectRoomsForeverHumilityPridePleaseIllusionRaisesComplexesHealMiserableVanityRejoiceApprovalModestyInferiorityRedeemedInferiority ComplexSelf Approval
Author:C. S. Lewis
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