Quotessence
Home / Authors / Clive Staples Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllHuman NatureScrewtape LettersDevilEgoEvolutionLazinessTranspositionArtAuthorityBad Habits

Famous Clive Staples Lewis Quotes

“Teach him to call it ‘real-life and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. (...) Never having been human (...) you don’t realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. (...) Thanks to processes we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. (...) But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is ‘the results of modern investigation’. Do remember you are there to fuddle him.”

CultureHuman NatureEgoDevilSelf AwarenessLazinessBlaming OthersSocial PressureMonkey Mind
Book:The Screwtape Letters
Create image

“And the sceptic’s conclusion that the so-called spiritual is really derived from the natural, that it is a mirage or projection or imaginary extension of the natural, is also exactly as we should expect; for, as we have seen, this is the mistake which an observer who knew only the lower medium would be bound to make in any case of Transposition. The brutal man never can by analysis find anything but lust in love; the Flatlander never can find anything but flat shapes in a picture; physiology never can find anything in thought except twichings of the grey matter. It is no good browbeating the critic who approaches a Transposition form below. On the evidence available to him his conclusion is the only one possible. Everything is different when you approach a Transposition from above.”

PhilosophyReligionSpiritualityEducationPsychologyHuman NatureEvolutionLazinessScrewtape LettersTransposition
Book:The Screwtape Letters
Create image

“About a week after this it was quite certain that Digory's Mother was getting better. About a fortnight later she was able to sit out in the garden. And a month later that whole house had become a different place. Aunt Letty did everything that Mother liked; windows were opened, frowsy curtains were drawn back to brighten up the rooms, there were new flowers everywhere, and nicer things to eat, and the old piano was tuned and Mother took up her singing again, and had such games with Digory and Polly that Aunt Letty would say "I declare, Mabel, you're the biggest baby of the three.”

Mothers
Book:The Magician’s Nephew
Create image

“It is therefore easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion. It may be a rebellion of serious thinkers against accepted clap-trap or of faddists against accepted good sense; of real artists against popular ugliness or of charlatans against civilised taste; of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness. Whichever it is, it will be unwelcome to Top People.”

SocietyAuthorityRebellionFriendship QuotesC S LewisGood Vs Bad
Author:Clive Staples Lewis
Create image

“O espírito desse esquema, ainda que não em todos os detalhes, está bem presente no Modelo Medieval. E se o leitor suspender sua descrença e exercitar sua imaginação neste assunto, mesmo que só por alguns minutos, acho que tomará consciência do amplo reajuste envolvido na leitura atenta dos poetas antigos. Encontrará toda a sua atitude perante o Universo invertida. No pensamento moderno, isto é, no pensamento evolucionário, o homem está no topo de uma escada cuja base se perde na escuridão; nesse Modelo, ele está na base de uma escada cujo topo é invisível por causa da luz ofuscante. Também compreenderá que algo, além do gênio individual, ajudou a dar aos anjos de Dante aquela majestade inigualável. Milton, ao perseguir esse objetivo, errou o alvo. O classicismo entrou no meio. Seus anjos têm anatomia demais, armaduras demais, e são por demais parecidos com os deuses de Homero e Virgílio, e (por essa mesma razão) são muito pouco parecidos com os deuses do paganismo em seus desenvolvimentos religiosos mais elevados. Depois de Milton, instaurou-se a degradação completa e, por fim, chegamos aos anjos puramente consoladores - portanto, femininos e aguados - da arte do século XIX.”

C S Lewis Quotes
Book:The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
Create image