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Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes

“The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.”

ThinkingMenWantMayDoeChurchAttitudeWasteLaysCriticsHumbleCriticalRejectsWasting TimeNourishmentPupilsSuitableWant HimRejectingLaymanReceptivityAppraise
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.”

WantNeedsGivingFirstsHumansChildrenRealDesireCausesGoalLove IsExistencePovertyTeachObjectsLoversGoodnessDefinitionsBelovedSelflessPlatoHis LoveGod's LoveDerivativesHuman Love
Author: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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“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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“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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“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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“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 want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven: a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all."”

PeopleWantSaidEndsFactsMightYoungUniverseFatherHeavenEnjoyAttitudePlansEach DayGood TimesGrandfatherBenevolenceFather In HeavenSenile
Book:A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works
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“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

WantChildrenSeemsJoyDesireReligionStrongSexHalfChristianityLordImagineSeaGoes OnDrinkOffersCreaturesAmbitionWeakInfiniteIgnorantHolidayPieMudOur LordHeartedSlumsGreat DivorceHalf HeartedMud PiesDesire For God
Book:Weight of Glory
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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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“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water...If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

IfsWorldWantFeelsWellsMadeDesireWaterBornThis WorldBabyCreaturesHungerSatisfactionExplanationSwimAnother WorldDucklings
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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“Temperance referred not abstaining, but going the right length and no further...of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying.”

PeopleMenWantGivingMayDoeReasonWholeChristianCoursesStrongEnjoyPoorToo MuchParticularDutyDrinkDrinkingLikesLengthDrunkennessTemperanceDrinking Too MuchAbstainingStrong Drink
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours.”

ThinkingWantGivingWellsSelfWholeFactsHandsDesireChristNaturalMy OwnGive MeInnocentWickedI Want YouNew Self
Book:C. S. Lewis on Joy
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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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“Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantWellsMeanDoeDesireActorsNamesWishTypeAmbitionBiggerCarefulBe CarefulGet Ahead
Book:God in the Dock
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“We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”

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Book:Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
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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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“I can answer that only by hearsay, returned the Guide, for pain is a secret which he has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mountain people. But those who know best say this, that any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer; and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want.”

PeopleKnowsMenWantI CanHardFeelingsPainDesireSufferingNextAnswersSecretRaceWorstMinesMountainGuidesBest ThingsHearsay
Author:C. S. Lewis
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