C S Lewis quotes

What I call my 'self' now is hardly a person at all. It's mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

History isn't just the story of bad people doing bad things. It's quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

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.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.

What I call my 'self' now is hardly a person at all. It's mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

Nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us... While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

What I call my 'self' now is hardly a person at all. It's mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

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

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us... While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?