C. S. Lewis's Quotes

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

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.

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

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

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

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.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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.

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

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

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

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

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.

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.'

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.

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

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

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

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

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

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

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.

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 only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

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.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

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.

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.