C.s. Lewis

Quotes

• “In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greates...”
• “When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked do...”
• “Here the whole world (stars, water, air,And field, and forest, as they wereReflected in a single mind)Like cast off clot...”
• “But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even...”
• “Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on as...”
• “Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little...”
• “In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as...”
• “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...”
• “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 y...”
• “Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to dis...”
• “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our p...”
• “Something of God... flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether c...”
• “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; ...”
• “If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is tha...”
• “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were...”
• “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with th...”
• “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other ...”
• “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age o...”
• “The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe ex...”
• “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everyt...”
• “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no ...”
• “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimat...”
• “Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unansw...”
• “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 bet...”
• “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to...”
• “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to y...”
• “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognit...”
• “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
• “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
• “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
• “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 have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
• “[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.”
• “God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”
• “Thought is what we start from: the simple, intimate, immediate datum. Matter is the inferred thing, the mystery.”
• “Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.”
• “He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”
• “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
• “The human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye)...”
• “He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)”
• “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
• “It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”
• “There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”
• “A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.”
• “The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.”
• “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
• “I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.”
• “God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
• “We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely”
• “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”