Authors — Quotes

C.S. Lewis Quotes: 142

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .
The Four Loves
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
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.
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
The Four Loves
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
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.
The Problem of Pain
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.
The Silver Chair
God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...
Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
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.
The Silver Chair
I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.
You can make anything by writing.
The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.
He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.
What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.
I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
A Grief Observed
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
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?
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
The Screwtape Letters
The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.
And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
Mere Christianity
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
Mere Christianity
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.
It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,"said the Lion.
The Silver Chair
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!
The Last Battle
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.
Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.
It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed.
The Silver Chair
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
The Great Divorce
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.
Prince Caspian
Adventures are never fun while you're having them.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.
Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it.
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume lll: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963
You can't know, you can only believe - or not.
Do not dare not to dare.
The Horse and His Boy
I was with book, as a woman is with child.
Till We Have Faces
For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
The Problem of Pain
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
Mere Christianity
Nothing is yet in its true form.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.
[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.
The Screwtape Letters
He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
The Joyful Christian
Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.
Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!
The Magician's Nephew
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
The Problem of Pain
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all.
The death of a beloved is an amputation.
A Grief Observed
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
Mere Christianity
In our world,"said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
The Four Loves
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.
Mere Christianity
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.
Mere Christianity
I seemed to hear God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk.
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
Miracles
When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.
The Horse and His Boy
We are what we believe we are!
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.
The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis
He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.
The Weight of Glory
Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.
But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
A Grief Observed
Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!
The Horse and His Boy
There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.
That Hideous Strength
You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.
The Magician's Nephew
My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.
A Grief Observed
In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
The Four Loves
Aslan: You doubt your value. Don't run from who you are.
Prince Caspian
And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?
A Grief Observed
When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.
We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely
We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.
The Problem of Pain
Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.
Screwtape Letters