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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“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?”

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Book:Mere Christianity
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“No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' --or else not.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.”

ThinkingMenWantMayDoeChurchAttitudeWasteLaysCriticsHumbleCriticalRejectsWasting TimeNourishmentPupilsSuitableWant HimRejectingLaymanReceptivityAppraise
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”

IfsMenHumansWellsLooksMayLongDoeMadeProblemSufferingLove IsPleasureExistenceObjectsDivineAll ThingsSakeGod LoveCentreDivine LoveHuman SufferingWords Love
Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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“...here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.)”

PeopleIfsThinkingTryingBelieveHeartMeanDoeSeemsWould BeNextAsksWishHurtEffortPayPromiseTasteForgivingCheatingBullyingResentmentCheatedBulliedMake OutHumiliateNo Cheating
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition.”

IfsLongDoeBookFactsSeemsLastsYoungBeliefNationsSeriousTypeHeroAdultsTraditionEducatedAssumptionBiologyLegendsHeroicCreepsIndoctrinationBiasedPoisonousPerniciousTacit
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "hullo! i'm growing up." It is only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call "growing up.”

PeopleKnowsMenLooksDoeImportantMomentsHappensGrowing UpOur LivesGrowingHappenedImportant ThingsRealisingRecogniseLife Happens
Book:Mere Christianity
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“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.”

IfsShouldDoeFactsRememberChristSinHeardBloodStrangeLaughterIllusionConcernGuiltMereCommittedHumbleCrueltyRepentanceSpeakersFalsehoodBe HumbleBoyhood
Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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“Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”

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Book:Mere Christianity
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“And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”

WorldWayLoveDoeMadeMatterWholeLife IsThreeDramaTrue LoveRoundsPatternsPersonal Life
Book:The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis
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“Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.”

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Book:A Year with C. S. Lewis: 365 Daily Readings from his Classic Works
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“When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.”

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Book:A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works
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“Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that god loves man and for his sake became man and died.”

MenDoeMadeGodChristianFaithJesusBeliefReligiousChristianityLordBecomingAll ThingsMiracleDiedCriticsSakeChristian InspirationalGod LoveNovelistsTrust In GodTheologianCommitment To GodInvolvingConfidence In GodServant Of GodLecturerGreatness Of GodFollowing JesusMighty GodEssayistsBroadcasters
Book:Miracles: A Preliminary Study
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“Temperance referred not abstaining, but going the right length and no further...of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.”

DoeFeelingsRememberSinCostDeterminationGreat ThingsIndifferenceHis LoveComes And GoesRelentlessFeelings Come And Go
Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.”

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Book:God in the Dock
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