Quotessence
Home / Books / A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis

A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis

Book by C. S. Lewis · 50 quotes · Ifs, Religion, Men

Filter quotes by topic

A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis Quotes

“Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for "down here" is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment's rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

“Hell is a state of mind -- ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind -- is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.”

“On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will.”

“A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live; a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death.”

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

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

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”