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C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis Books

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The Four Loves

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Perelandra

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“It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you find that what we call ‘seeing a table’ lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but we cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgment: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”

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Book:The Abolition of Man & The Great Divorce
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“I wasn't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.”

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Book:PERELANDRA:
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“Another attempt to get a Pacifist conclusion from the intuition is of a more political and calculating kind. If not the greatest evil, yet war is a great evil. Therefore, we should all like to remove it if we can. But every war leads to another war. The removal of war must therefore be attempted. We must increase by propaganda the number of Pacifists in each nation until it becomes great enough to deter that nation from going to war. This seems to me wild work. Only liberal societies tolerate Pacifists. In the liberal society, the number of Pacifists will either be large enough to cripple the state as a belligerent, or not. If not, you have done nothing. If it is large enough, then you have handed over the state which does tolerate Pacifists to its neighbour who does not. Pacifism of this kind is taking the straight road to a world in which there will be no Pacifists.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to ‘glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bath him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.”

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“The truth is, I think, that ‘our deeds are ours: their ends none of our own’. Who knows–why should we know?–what will in the end reach the ear of humanity? The successes of our own age may be speedily forgotten: some poem scribbled in pencil on the fly leaf of a schoolbook may survive and be read and be an influence when English is a dead language. Who knows, even, whether to reach the ears of other men is the purpose for which this impulse is really implanted in us? Perhaps in the eyes of the gods the true use of a book lies in its effects upon the author. You remember what Ibsen said, that every play he wrote had been written for the purgation of his own heart. And in my own humbler way I feel quite certain that I could not have certain good things now if I had not gone through the writing of Dymer. Or if a book has an audience of one–surely we must not assume that this may not be, from some superhuman point of view, as much justification as an audience of thousands. I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development. If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”

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Book:The Complete Chronicles of Narnia (Illustrated): The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Prince Caspian. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The Silver Chair. ... Boy. The Magician's Nephew. The Last Battle
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“When I was a boy -- a bourgeois boy -- that term was applied to my social class by the class above it. Bourgeois meant "not aristocratic, therefore vulgar." When I was in my twenties this changed. My class was now vilified by the class below it; bourgeois began to mean "not proletarian, therefore parasitic, reactionary." Thus it has always been a reproach to assign a man to that class which has provided the world with nearly all its divines, poets, philosophers, scientists, musicians, painters, doctors, architects, and administrators.”

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“Por outro lado, quando você se sentir tentado a não se incomodar com os problemas de alguém porque eles "não lhe dizem respeito", lembre-se de que, apesar de essa pessoa ser diferente de você, ela faz parte do mesmo organismo. Se esquecer esse fato, você se tornará um individualista. Se, por outro lado, esquecer que ela é um órgão diferente, quiser suprimir as diferenças e fazer todas as pessoas iguais, tornar-se-á um totalitário. O cristão não deve ser nem uma coisa nem outra. Sinto o forte desejo de lhe dizer — e acho que você sente a mesma coisa — qual dos dois erros é o pior. Essa é a estratégia do diabo para nos pegar. Ele sempre envia ao mundo erros aos pares — pares de opostos. E sempre nos estimula a desperdiçar um tempo precioso na tentativa de adivinhar qual deles é o pior. Sabe por quê? Ele usa o fato de você abominar um deles para levá-lo aos poucos a cair no extremo oposto; Mas não nos deixemos enganar. Temos de manter os olhos fixos em nosso objetivo, que está bem à nossa frente, e passar reto no meio de ambos os erros. Nem um nem outro nos interessam.”

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Book:Mere Christianity
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“I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, “But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?” He replied with total gravity—he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar—“Yes, but in England it’s true.” To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite. On the lunatic fringe it may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid.”

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“..(T)here are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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