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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“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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“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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“When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?”

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Book:Out of the Silent Planet
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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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“The man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.”

MenWorldMindTwoRealSelfSidesViewsKnowingAirReaderAngelPoint Of ViewSatisfiedJournalistComplexityDullReal WorldAnnoyingShallowVulgarNobilitySpecialistsDelicacyInaccessibleHumbugKnowing Things
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant....As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden.”

FirstsLongMadeRealHappinessFormImaginationColorBrotherFlowerGardenForestsMy BrotherParadiseCoveredToysMy ImaginationNurseryMossTinBiscuitsTwigs
Book:Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
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“The standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.”

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Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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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.”

IfsMenTryingBelieveMayDoeRealMomentsBreakPromiseFairsComplainingThought ProvokingProvokingNot Fair
Book:A Year with C. S. Lewis: 365 Daily Readings from his Classic Works
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“Man has got to take charge of Man.... Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no 'take-it-or-leave-it' nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it'll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we'll get on to biochemical conditioning int he end and direct manipulation of the brain.”

MenWantTryingFirstsMeanRealEndsCoursesParentBrainEducationDirectPatientIncludingPsychologicalNonsenseManipulationConditioningReal EducationNatal
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers-or should I say, nurses?-will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”

MenWayWantShouldMayLittlesRealMightTeacherPlansTeachingIgnoranceWasteFellowsBusySpreadNurseShould IPenaltiesToilIncentivesConceitToo BusyAbolitionReassuringDuncesVermin
Book:The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast
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“We must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste.”

MenWritingTryingRealFactsPassionEvilSecretAttitudeQualityTasteHonestlySubtleAnnoyingEntwined
Book:Christian Reflections
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“What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.”

IfsWantFeelsWritingWellsLongRealMatterAgeNextViewsEffortPracticeFireMinutesPagesWhat You WantProseThrownVerses
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.”

WantChildrenRealJobsBitsSimpleMoralPrinciplesTeacherMoralityLessonsHorseAnxiousIntroducingReally GreatFenceCrankReal JobsQuacksShirk
Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that his operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give him our confidence in spite of this.”

IfsWayNeedsGivingHumansRealFactsLife IsWiseHighestSatisfiedHuman LifeOperationsSpitePrudenceExceed
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is.”

IfsRealDonePoliticalCoursesLeftSidesEnemySupportTelevisionEssentialsPaperOppositionFierceTerrifiedToesPapersThings DoneSlanderRacketReal PowerNon Political
Book:That Hideous Strength
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“Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying.”

IfsShouldRealMatterDoneEffortAirJourneyMoralityMountainWingsFlyingIceAccomplishedClimbsLackingRopeSummitAscentAxes
Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
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