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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.”

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Book:Reflections on the Psalms
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“He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.”

PeopleIfsPersonsLawSinLove IsPartyBrokenConcernedMake SenseWoundedOffenseForgivenOffendedInjured
Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“Human beings look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well, and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing--rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.”

IfsMenHumansWellsLooksMadeStillsDifferentMomentsPastMotherHumanityCoursesFatherIndividualHuman BeingsGrowingTreeWalkingSpreadComplicatedConnectedEvery ManPresent MomentGrandparentGrowing Things
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”

IfsWayFeelsWellsLongMadeI CanFeelingsMightActionCertainCan DoGoes OnPromiseHungryCeaseCommitBeing TrueBelovedHeadache
Book:Mere Christianity
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“Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.”

IfsMenWayWantNeedsFeelsShouldHumansDoeMadeSaidDoneHateChristianityOughtHatredShould HaveSorryCrueltyAtomsOne WordTreacheryUnsaidBeing Sorry
Book:Mere Christianity: a revised and enlarged edition, with a new introduction, of the three books, The case for Christianity, Christian behaviour, and Beyond personality
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“I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.”

IfsKnowsFeelsHas BeensBookEndsHappensNightLeftTearsMiserableGoodbyeCriedAll NightWardrobeSaying GoodbyeQuietnessLucyNarniaUp All NightLion Witch WardrobeLion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on the mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can't follow. It would be far better for us if you were foul and ravening. We'd rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We'd rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal.”

IfsHeartMadeI CanWould BeAgeMotherTakenGrowingBloodSonCallingHappeningsImmortalEverlastingStolenDrankBridesFoul
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

IfsMenChildrenHas BeensDesireReadingFoundFearSecretGrowing UpChildhoodTenIncludingTalesMaturityNovelistsFairyFiftyAshamedMatureReading BooksFairy TaleAdulthoodGetting OlderFairytaleChildishnessChildish Things
Book:On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
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“The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.”

IfsThinkingFirstsHumansChildrenActionTogetherReadingGamesTakenTeachingListeningPrayingDestroyedTennisBombsFrightenedSensibleSheepListening To MusicAtomic BombBathingPintsChildren PlayingChattingDarts
Book:Present Concerns
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“Suppose... suppose we have only dreamed and made up these things like sun, sky, stars, and moon, and Aslan himself. In that case, it seems to me that the made-up things are a good deal better than the real ones. And if this black pits of a kingdom is the best you can make, then it's a poor world. And we four can make a dream world to lick your real one hollow.”

IfsWorldMadeRealDreamSeemsStarsBlackPoorDealsCasesSunFourSkyMoonKingdomsHollowPitsReal OnesDream WorldPuddleglum
Author:C. S. Lewis
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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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“If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.”

IfsHouseImaginationAccountsBlowCardsHouse Of Cards
Book:A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely
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“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.”

IfsMenSaidGirlCitiesBoysKingsMen And WomenAngrySorryRealmsLionsBoastEmperorBoy And GirlNarnia
Book:A Year With Aslan: Words of Wisdom and Reflection from the Chronicles of Narnia
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“If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love - You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.”

IfsMenHas BeensImportantChristianTermVirtueHappenedLove YouHighestNegativeIdealsImportanceTwentiesGood ThingsCarrieGood ManSuggestionsNineteenAbstinenceUnselfishness
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I never heard weeping like that before or after; not from a child, nor a man wounded in the palm, nor a tortured man, nor a girl dragged off to slavery from a taken city. If you heard the woman you most hate in the world weep so, you would go to comfort her. You would fight your way through fire and spears to reach her. And I knew who wept, and what had been done to her, and who had done it.”

IfsMenWorldWayChildrenDoneHateGirlFightingCitiesTakenFireHeardComfortSlaveryWoundedPalmsWeepingSpears
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.”

IfsTryingReasonWholeSpiritReaderErrorsCommitAcademicCreamReceptiveWhipped CreamVenison
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”

IfsWantShouldMayWould BeCareCoursesWhiteAnswersShareConditionsFellowsAffectionDon't CareAriseEnthusiasmI Don't CareTruthfulMiceWant SomethingTraveller
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. Is must not become what the people call a "mutual admiration society"; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.”

PeopleIfsRealityFacesSpiritualNaturalLove IsEnemyPathDivineSweetProtectionMutualAdmirationInvokeAppreciativeWholeheartedlyNatural LoveDivine ProtectionMutual Admiration
Book:The Four Loves
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“But what would have been the good?" Aslan said nothing. "You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right – somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?" "To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that." "Oh dear," said Lucy. "But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me – what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”

IfsKnowsWayMeanChildrenHas BeensSaidHappensHappenedPleaseFindingsDearGet UpOne WayFollow MeLucy
Book:The Chronicles of Narnia Vol II: Prince Caspian
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“Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.”

IfsHas BeensCharacterStoriesEyeTurnsMetsConversationPagesVegetablesResurrectionMinorsDisguiseMinor Characters
Book:Miracles: A Preliminary Study
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“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

IfsNeedsFeelsHelpingRememberFacesTurnsSoundSilenceDoorsArmsGratitudeClaimsPraiseVainDesperateYour FaceTemptedInterruptionsOpen ArmsGrief Observed
Book:A Grief Observed
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