Quotes by C.S. Lewis

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

...'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and a...

C.S. Lewis

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter ...

C.S. Lewis

Life at a vile boarding school is in this way a good preparation for the Christian life, that it teaches one to live by hope. Even, in a sense, by faith; for at the beginning of each term, home and the holidays are so far off that it is as hard to re...

C.S. Lewis

Was joy created always to live under that threat? Always defenseless to those who would rather be miserable than have their self will be crossed? Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? The dema...

C.S. Lewis

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy....

C.S. Lewis

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be ...

C.S. Lewis

Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

C.S. Lewis

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient book should be read only by the professionals, and the amateur should content himself with modern books.

C.S. Lewis

The present state of the world is normal; it with the last (19th) century that with the abnormality.

C.S. Lewis

Where they (modern books) are true they will give us truths we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep it clean seabreeze of the centuries flowing...

C.S. Lewis

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the 20th century– the blindness about which posterity will ask,'but how COULD they have thought that?' lies where we have never suspected it.

C.S. Lewis

Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.

C.S. Lewis

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.

C.S. Lewis

He has caught me using the word "literally" where I did not really mean it, a vile journalistic cliché which he cannot possibly reprobate more severely than I do myself.

C.S. Lewis

GK Chesterton was not afraid to combine serious Christian themes with buffoonery.

C.S. Lewis

I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about.

C.S. Lewis

When man comes into the presence of God he will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times, or even from his earlier self, have fallen off. He is back where he always was...

C.S. Lewis

If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

C.S. Lewis

All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit, and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being h...

C.S. Lewis

His whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man's mind off the subject of his own value altogether. He would rather the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forget about it, than that he should spend much time and pains ...

C.S. Lewis

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

C.S. Lewis