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C. S. Lewis Quotes

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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought feeling after feeling action after action had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an harrow to the string then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead through to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontier-post across it. So many roads once now so many culs de sac.”

ThinkingFeelsFeelingsActionRememberGriefGoneObjectsHabitLaysPostsSuspenseImpulseFrustrationStringsTargetBowsFrontiersFittingHabitual
Book:A Grief Observed
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“But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.”

ThinkingWorldGivingFactsGamesEnjoyTermPlayerPoetReaderLoversHonorPraiseObviousDelightRingsEnjoymentComplimentApprovalMistressCountrysideWalkersOverflow
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

ThinkingChildrenBodySpeakStarsDifficultVoiceWaterTalkingFireHeardTreeBloodSkyDivineColdWalkingPureBlueAwakeBeastLionsFlashVeilsBlue SkyOverheadNarnia
Book:A Year With Aslan: Words of Wisdom and Reflection from the Chronicles of Narnia
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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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“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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“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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“There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”

ThinkingMenTryingMayDoeMatterUseInspirationSpiritualFaithMaterialsCreaturesEatingWineChristian InspirationalLikesBreadNew LifeCrudeMaterial ThingsBread And Wine
Book:Mere Christianity
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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.”

PeopleThinkingTwoIdeasDifferentRealFactsMoralityStandardsIndependentCompareTwo ThingsAdmitting
Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.”

IfsThinkingFirstsMeanI CanDoneRealizingStepsHumilityProudAcquireThought ProvokingFirst StepsProvokingConceitedChristian Humility
Book:Joyful Christian
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“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?”

ThinkingCountryLightTogetherGirlBitsWatchesAudienceGoneStageTheatreCoveredAppetitePlatesLiftingTeaseMutton
Book:The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
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“I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.”

ThinkingShouldKindSeemsSufferingEvilBlackSinPleasureTerribleSelfishMoodTemptationIncessantBeing Selfish
Book:The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963
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“Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”

ThinkingMenNeedsWholeSeemsChristianHumanityCoursesChristDyingParticularCreaturesDiedExcellenceRedemptionMeritReversePhysiciansWorth ItIncarnationDepravityRedeemed
Book:The World's Last Night: And Other Essays
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