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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“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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“We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”

IfsMenWantHeartSoulRunningDesireHeavenEnjoyGoalWalksObjectsExerciseOffersPureSafeRewardsDefinitionsMotiveLeapHis LoveBribeDisinterestedMercenary
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.”

PeopleIfsWorldLifeGamesPlayerSeriousEternalRaisedBridgesStakesCosmicEternal LifePenniesGood GodNonentity
Book:A Grief Observed
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“Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantKindRealUseFeelingsChristianMy FriendsExcitingTheologyDoctrineDesertConfusedMapsPiousChristian Doctrine
Book:Mere Christianity
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“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”

IfsMomentsLossGriefCuttingRoundsDareLegsCirclesRepeatsEmptinessPhasesNoveltyEmergingSpiralsGrief ObservedStillbirth
Book:A Grief Observed
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“Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains [heaven]. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”

IfsHas BeensBodySpiritualDesireEnergyHeavenNaturalPoorBloodGoes OnMountainWeakRaisedFleshLustAriseSubmitLowestRichnessWhisperingFlesh And BloodLizardsStallions
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

IfsGivingShouldBelieveLittlesCommonOughtComfortSafeStandardsCharityIncomeLuxuryGenerositySettlingEtcSparesAmusementCharitableExpendituresHamperCharity And Generosity
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.”

IfsThinkingMenFeelsHeartKindMadeRealMomentsFactsHappensEasyHurtQualityKindnessImagineTroubleSacrificeCreaturesFellowsOneselfVicesConvictionHumbleAttributesAnnoyingRight PlaceInadequateConsoleBenevolentChaste
Author: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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“But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself.”

IfsKnowsGivingTryingMayChoicesHousePoorOne DayCreaturesDespairMachinesBlessedComplexesVulgarWretchedQuarrelsSnapsInferiorityScrapYour Best FriendFlingPerversionInferiority Complex
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.”

IfsMenMindReasonPurposeMouthsUltimateFoundationPracticalsCriticizeTaoTheoreticalOpen MindIdiocy
Book:THE ABOLITION OF MAN
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“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away.”

IfsMenWantTwoRealSoulEnoughWholeShowsLightThreeMy OwnActivityMy FriendsThirdsBlessedDelightJealousDividesFourthOur LoveReal FriendsQualifiedTrue FriendshipFacetsTwo FriendsNewcomersJealous Love
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — "Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

IfsKnowsMenMayYoungReadingWishSoundMillionsAtheismFineSurpriseAtheistCarefulYoung ManTrapsStratagem
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.”

IfsWantMindHumansTwoValuesOrderQualityPoetPraiseCriticsCandidatesDistinctionPrizeHuman MindPreference
Book:The Four Loves
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“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

IfsWorldWantFeelsHardMomentsHouseFeltFearGriefEmptyInvisibleDrunkSensationsStomachNot AfraidDreadBlanketBeing AfraidRestlessnessSwallowingFlutteringYawningGrief Observed
Book:A Grief Observed
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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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“There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”

IfsInspirationalFallPassionNaturalLevelsMistakeEasierEternalDevilAngelGoldStrongerAffectionRefuseCorruptionConversionHeavenlyAppetiteMistakenClayEternal LoveBrassGreat Divorce
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly; you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true; you've been disappointed so often before.”

IfsKnowsWantFeelsWellsFightingKnow HowBeing TrueDisappointedTrue YouToo Good To Be TrueHoping For Something
Book:The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen
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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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“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time...The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up.”

IfsKnowsGivingSelfHandsHappinessFallLosesRecordsSeriousAmountDespairGiving UpOvercomingTemptationEtcTemperOffendedImpatienceAnnoyanceUpper HandPetulance
Author:C. S. Lewis
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