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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“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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“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

IfsKnowsMenWorldWantMindEndsStatesDoneFactsWould BeEnemyTalentDesignGladBeing The BestState Of MindRejoiceBiasSunriseElephantsFavourNeighbourCathedralsWant HimWaterfallsScrewtape Letters
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it.”

KnowsWayWellsEnoughRememberArtistReligionWalksTrustDutyAskingLeavingObviousStationsSubmitFulfillingRight WayAsking For Forgiveness
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that darkness?' asked Drinian. Use?' replied Reepicheep. 'Use, Captain?' If you mean by filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as I have ever heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.”

IfsKnowsLooksMeanLittlesUseTurnsDarknessHeardAdventureHonourSailCaptainsBellyFillingPursesImpeachmentPloughingReepicheep
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”

KnowsWantHeartSaidDesireEvilMiseryEndlessLengthGoddessAlasShakingKnow It All
Book:The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen
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“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.”

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Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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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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“Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.”

KnowsMenTryingMayMeanSaidEarthRememberWishAttentionTeachDogWasteLaysExcuseTricksExperimentsDevotionPerformingPeterSheepRatsNovelty
Book:Joyful Christian
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“This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we--even our poets and musicians and inventors--never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their Creator”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to "know of the doctrine." All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.”

KnowsTryingFirstsYoungSpiritLyingDesirePurposeFoundFatherNamesWaitingSidesDangerAmbitionFirst TimeHatredUniversalHarmonyPreparedAtheistLustPracticalsDoctrineNurseZoosNurseryLegionHaremWait For Him
Author:C. S. Lewis
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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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“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

KnowsFirstsBelieveLongMatterBeliefStrongEasySoundKnow HowBoxesLife And DeathTrustedFalsehoodRopeCordsPrecipiceGrief Observed
Book:A Grief Observed
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“As to...old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off.”

ThinkingKnowsArtFeelingsImaginationImagineModernWalkingPureEatingHighestMusic IsSittingEtcComposerImagine ThatSchubertModern Music
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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“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.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.”

KnowsChildrenHas BeensRealStoriesRealityValuesEnjoyRichWiseColdGoldHorseMythBreadMeatApplesDullSignificancePretendingBowsRetreatVeilsArrowsFamiliarityBuffaloSavoryBows And Arrows
Book:Image and Imagination
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“All right, beautiful. You've got me tied down to this stone table, and there's a knife in your hand that says you get to rule Narnia for another hundred years. So maybe I die, and winter goes on. Maybe the hunger and the darkness and the fear never end. But as long as the children believe in me, I know that Aslan will live again. I, the Great Lion, Son of The Emperor Over The Sea, will live again and -- aaaaauugh!!”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.”

KnowsTryingKindLongDoneWholeLightCoursesHouseWaitingDifferencesRoomsCommonDoorsPrayingPleaseAskingRegardPaintHallsCampingYour RoomTrue OnesLong Wait
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“You asked for a loving God: you have one... The consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes.”

KnowsMenWorldShouldChildrenMadeReasonEyeArtistValuesFatherSexFireDogCreaturesShould HaveCreatorJealousPersistentConsumingLoving GodInexorableProdigious
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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