C.S. Lewis Quotes

A collection of quotes by C.S. Lewis.

Clive Staples Lewis, commonly known as C.S. Lewis, was a highly influential British writer and scholar, born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland. He is best known for his captivating fantasy series, "The Chronicles of Narnia." Lewis developed a deep love for storytelling and mythology from a young age, and this passion would shape his future work.

Lewis served as a professor of English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He gained widespread recognition for his expertise in medieval literature, becoming a renowned academic figure. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Lewis penned numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and essays, exploring various genres such as theology, Christian apologetics, and allegorical fiction.

His most notable literary achievement, "The Chronicles of Narnia," consists of seven books that continue to enchant readers of all ages. Published between 1950 and 1956, this beloved series has sold millions of copies worldwide and has been adapted into multiple films, further cementing Lewis's status as a celebrated author.

Central to Lewis's writing was his strong Christian faith, which infused his stories and informed his persuasive works on Christianity. Still, many of his works have garnered critical acclaim and readership beyond religious circles, appealing to individuals from diverse backgrounds due to their timeless themes, vivid imagination, and masterful storytelling.

C.S. Lewis passed away on November 22, 1963, leaving an enduring legacy as one of the most respected and beloved writers of the twentieth century. His works continue to captivate generations, inspiring readers to explore the depths of imagination, faith, and the power of good storytelling.

The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecover

The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable.

Death Grave Symbolism

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be t

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

Religion Reading Atheism

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were educated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.

Philosophy Culture Engagement Spiritual Warfare

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that worked like machines--would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Love Inspirational Free Will

The vocabulary of endearment, complaint, and abuse, provides

The vocabulary of endearment, complaint, and abuse, provides, I think, almost the only specimens of words that are purely emotional, words from which all imaginative or conceptual content has vanished, so that they have no function at all but to express or stimulate emotion, or both. And an examination of them soon convinces us that in them we see language at its least linguistic. We have come to the frontier between language and inarticulate vocal sounds. And at that frontier we find a two-way traffic going on.

Words Emotion Linguistics

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the sta

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire 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, we are like ignorant children who want to continue making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Desire

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well th

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the 'surprise' is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn't look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. So in literature. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we are leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia.

Literature Quotes

That is one of the functions of art: to present what the nar

That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.

Art

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because G

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

God Forgiveness Christianity

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless yo

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

Friendship Middle Aged Moralizing To Be Or To Do

Some think it the historian's business to penetrate beyond t

Some think it the historian's business to penetrate beyond this apparent confusion and heterogeneity, and to grasp in a single intuition the 'spirit' or 'meaning' of his period. With some hesitation, and with much respect for the great men who have thought otherwise, I submit that this is exactly what we must refrain from doing.

Literary Criticism

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong sid

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

Hope Heaven Christianity

Are not lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last

Are not lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it.

Friendship

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have gues

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.

Christianity

There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in r

There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?

God Religion Ref Ch 11

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

Love Forgiveness

I hope I do not offend God by making my Communions in the fr

I hope I do not offend God by making my Communions in the frame of mind I have been describing. The command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand.

Christianity Holy Communion

In a WWII radio talk, Lewis champions the well-established i

In a WWII radio talk, Lewis champions the well-established idea that actions lead emotions. Although he is making the point with respect to love, he illustrates with the opposite. The Germans hated the Jews, then acted on that. Because they did, their loathing was intensified by their own actions.

Love Hatred

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of ev

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Courage Virtue

When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only ab

When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamor of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

God Abandon Screwtape Letters