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