C. S. Lewis famous quotes

The people with very hard problems are understood by God. He knows what wretched machines they are trying to drive. Some day he will fling them away and give those people new ones; then they may astonish everyone, for they learned their driving in a hard school. Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #School #People

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Forgiveness #God #Christian

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
-- C. S. Lewis

#God #Faith #Believe

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Religious #Secret

[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Strong #Philosophy #Boys

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#God #Christian #Thinking

The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Perfect #Church #Would Be

Many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and... God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again
-- C. S. Lewis

#Gone #World #Made

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Sympathy #Regret #Fear

To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Mean #Advice #Trying

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Country #Desire #Alive

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Cost #Dangerous #Impulse

God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Perseverance #Hard Times #What Matters

The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can't supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Heart #Home #Heaven

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Yoga #Soul #Body

He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Religion #Done

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Blessed #Blessing #Christian Inspirational

He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.
-- C. S. Lewis

When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Marriage #Valentines Day

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Inspirational #Heart

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Art #Taken #Mean

The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Dirty #Tests

My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Mean #Son #Jewels

Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Heart #Sleep #Dragons

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Kindness #Love Is #Christianity

Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Life #Happiness #May

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Change #Inspiring

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Giving Up #Real #New Beginnings

God is love, and that love works through men-especially through the whole community of Christians.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Men #Community

The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.
-- C. S. Lewis

#God #Christian Inspirational #Feelings

I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Believe #Praying

On the back of Satan's neck is a nail scarred footprint.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Nails #Necks #Satan

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Forgiveness #Thinking #Forgiving

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Life #Encouraging #Not Giving Up

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Inspirational #Life

God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.
-- C. S. Lewis

#First Love #Love Is #Soul

A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Christian #Men #Repent

Love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit...
-- C. S. Lewis

#Being In Love #Love Is #Feelings

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Life #Inspiring #Powerful

The birth of Christ is the central event in the history of the earth-- the very thing the whole story has been about.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Events #Stories #Earth

Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Dying #Christ

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Believe #Giving #Safe

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
-- C. S. Lewis

#God #Atheist #Literature

Do not dare not to dare.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Life #Religion #Dare

We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely
-- C. S. Lewis

#Might #Matter #Might Have Been

If one could run without getting tired I don't think one would often want to do anything else.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Running #Tired #Thinking

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Happiness #Religious

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Truth #Views #Answers

Imagine yourself as a living house.
-- C. S. Lewis

#House #Imagine

No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Joy #Missing #Soul

It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Worship #Process

To love is to be vulnerable....
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love You #Love Is #Vulnerable

Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?
-- C. S. Lewis

#Spiritual #Men #Forever

Holiness is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it the whole world would be converted and happy before the year's end.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Faith #Inspiration #Years

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.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Strong #Sex #Children

It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Nice #Cost #Rebellious

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Heart #Animal #Broken

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
-- C. S. Lewis

#God #Wisdom #Atheist

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Art #Truth #Creativity

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Book #Reading #Men

Joy is the serious business of heaven.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Marriage #Joy #Heaven

Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Fun #Having Fun #Kind

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Sad #Hurt

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Pain #Stains #Tribulation

Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Life #Trying

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Decay #Logic

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Religion #Dirt

It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Reality #Mind #Done

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Humorous #Kids #Boys

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Jobs #Writing #Wonderful

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Intellectual #Religion #Slacker

She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Sarcastic #Women #Expression

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Conceited #Men #Thinking

To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Kings #Stars #Queens

Nothing is yet in its true form.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Truth #Mystery #Wonder

I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Love #Sides #Narnia

[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Faith #Men #Thinking

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Reading #Two #Eating

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Religion #Trying #Succeed

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Book #Writing #Made

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Country #Home #Thinking

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Mistake #Evil #Necessary Evil

We're free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you're running away to Narnia you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn't your horse any longer. One might just as well say you're her human.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Running #Horse #Want

I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Thinking #Sick

until the theologians and the ordained clergy begin to communicate with ordinary people in the vernacular, in a way that they can understand, I’m going to have to do this sort of thing.
-- C. S. Lewis

#People #Ordinary #Way

Further up and further in!
-- C. S. Lewis

I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Writing

You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Earth #Bows #Shame

The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Veils #Rich #Myth

What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.
-- C. S. Lewis

#People #Religion #Share

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Hurt #Pain #Men

The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Keys #Doors #Hands

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?
-- C. S. Lewis

#Faith #Religion #Answers

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Faith #Blessed #Inspiration

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Inspirational #Philosophy #Medicine

The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Life #Universe

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Real #Writing #Interest

I seemed to hear God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Gun

Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Prepared