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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Wisdom: The first error is that of the southern people, and it consists in holding that these eastern and western places are real places. Give no quarter to that thought, whether it threatens you with fear, or tempts you with hopes. For this is Superstition and all who believe it will come in the end to the swamps, to the south and the jungles, to the far south. Part of the same error is to think that the Landlord is a real man.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.”

PeopleNeedsGivingTryingKindTwoBeautifulWiseStupidDivineDelightGod LoveDisagreeableGreatness Of GodLovableKinds Of LoveBeautiful PeopleGod Loves UsWise Love
Book:The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963
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“Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts - to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures...far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment.”

ThinkingKnowsMenGivingPlayPurposeSongSidesComfortThousandBedMen And WomenFemaleArgumentMalesScriptureEnjoymentCompanionPeculiarAdamRaptureCordsMiltonAugustineThinking God
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

GivingArtPhilosophyReligionValuesFriendshipRelationshipEmotionalFriendsSurvivalNovelistsUnnecessaryGood FriendReal FriendsMy Best FriendTrue FriendshipBest FriendMy FriendshipAbout FriendshipNew FriendsLove And FriendshipFriendship LoveFriendship MemoriesLost FriendshipOne Line FriendshipEssayistsBest FriendshipFriendship DayFriend LoveGreat FriendshipFemale FriendshipLasting FriendshipFriends And EnemiesNew FriendshipOne FriendFriendship GardenHappy Friendship DayFriends For LifeCircle Of FriendsDeep FriendshipBeing A Good FriendThat One FriendSweet FriendshipGood FriendshipFemale FriendsAwesome FriendshipFriendships And RelationshipsHeart Touching FriendsMeaningful FriendshipUnique FriendshipSweet FriendHeart Touching FriendshipCelebrating With FriendsI Have No FriendsThank You FriendshipNice FriendSongs And FriendshipNice FriendshipValued FriendsTouching FriendshipMeaning Of FriendshipValue Of Love
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“To the glistening Eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy, the Valiant. To the great Western Wood, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant Southern sun, Queen Susan, the Gentle; and to the clear Northern sky I give you King Peter, the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen. May your wisdom grace us 'til the stars rain down from the heavens.”

GivingMayHeavenStarsSunClearGraceSeaSkyKingsRainWesternWoodsGentleQueensSouthernPeterMagnificentEasternWardrobeRadiantLucyNarniaValiantLion Witch WardrobeLion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Stop it," spluttered Eustace, "go away. Put that thing away. It's not safe. Stop it, I say. I'll tell Caspian. I'll have you muzzled and tied up." "Why do you not draw your own sword, poltroon!" cheeped the Mouse. "Draw and fight or I'll beat you black and blue with the flat." "I haven't got one," said Eustace. "I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in fighting." "Do I understand," said Reepicheep, withdrawing his sword for a moment and speaking very sternly, "that you do not intend to give me satisfaction?”

GivingBelieveSaidMomentsFightingBlackHavensSafeBeatsDrawsGive MeBlueDon't BelieveSatisfactionFlatsGoing AwayTiedMicePacifistTied UpWithdrawingReepicheep
Book:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Enhanced Edition)
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“At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”

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Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

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Book:Mere Christianity
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