C. S. Lewis quotes - page 2

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. (C. S. Lewis)
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. View quote
C. S. Lewis
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. View quote
C. S. Lewis
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. View quote
C. S. Lewis
It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. View quote
C. S. Lewis
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. View quote
C. S. Lewis
I have always at least, ever since I can remember had a kind of longing for death. View quote
C. S. Lewis
All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. View quote
C. S. Lewis
The man is a humbug - a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull... View quote
C. S. Lewis
Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. (C. S. Lewis)
You know what this is, I suppose. Religious melancholia. Stop while there is time. If you dive, you dive into insanity. View quote
C. S. Lewis
A sensible human once said, "If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit"; and again, "She's the sort of woman who lives for others-you can always tell the others by their hunted expression." View quote
C. S. Lewis
When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.' View quote
C. S. Lewis
We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may "conquer" them. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. View quote
C. S. Lewis
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him. View quote
C. S. Lewis
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. View quote
C. S. Lewis
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat. View quote
C. S. Lewis
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. (C. S. Lewis)
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. View quote
C. S. Lewis
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. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. View quote
C. S. Lewis