C. S. Lewis Quotes

Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful...

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ...

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking ...

In other words, The­ol­ogy is prac­ti­cal: espe­cially now. In the old days, when there was less edu...

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as...

Love is the great conqueror of lust.

The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be ...

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the wa...

When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him...

The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are peopl...

I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He se...

of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole h...

In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pi...

And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its pain...

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reaso...

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is giv...

In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for i...

No people find each other more absurd than lovers

But of course, when they ask for a "lead from the church," most people mean they want the clergy to ...

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody [behind the Moral Law]. One is the universe He has m...

Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the prom...

And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowl...

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowada...

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and e...

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and ...

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of...

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do th...

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he...

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You c...

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this ide...

The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but t...

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... I...

The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist...

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. ...

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.....

When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is...

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y...

The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves ...

Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally ...

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give...

But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated w...

When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those w...

When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in hi...

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense i...

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes an...

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way...

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunge...

Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, th...

When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure so...

Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little mar...

Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply no...

If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than th...

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make ev...

Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then f...

Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, tha...

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian moral...

And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin again...

If we really believe what we say we believe- if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this...

A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity becau...

... the very last thing I want to do is to unsettle in the mind of any Christian, whatever his denom...

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we rceive a sacrament, or repent, or su...

We had better share our bewilderments. By hiding them from each other we should not hide them from o...

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it eno...

I hope I do not offend God by making my Communions in the frame of mind I have been describing. The ...

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may no...

It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled w...

A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half a...

The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on ...

This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we--even...

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at...

For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.

Our struggle is--isn't it?--to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a...

I enjoy writing fiction more than writing anything else. Wouldn't anyone?

You see, I don't think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think oth...

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Morta...

In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you ar...

To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than m...

Of Course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did, He would not be moving you to seek Him (and...

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and...

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible Gods and Goddesses. To remember that the dull...

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotion...

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in...

If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are un...

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without cea...

It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion—as distinct from a transient fit of appetite—tha...

We...advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man clai...

When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, “Why all this prudery? Let us treat ...

A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse...

It's not a question of God `sending' us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which w...

...some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He ...

...here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if...

Man with his new powers became rich like Midas but all that he touched had gone dead and cold.

Authority, reason, experience; on these three, mixed in varying proportions all our knowledge depend...

If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just ...

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes hims...

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out...

In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself.