CS Lewis Quotes

CS Lewis was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

1 The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

2 One needs the sweetness to start one on the spiritual life but, once started, one must learn to obey God for his own sake, not for the pleasure. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

3 To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

4 I wonder if people who asked for God to intervene in our world, really know what they are asking. Will they want to be there when God really does intervene? – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

5 There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty themselves….The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison “but for less. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

6 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. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

7 To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. – (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

8 What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may or may not, allow other men to profit by.

9 Those who begin worshipping power soon worship evil.

10 Don’t shine so others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see Him.

11 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

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

13 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.

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

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

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

17 Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

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

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

20 A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

21 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.

22 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.

23 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.

24 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.

25 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.

26 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.‘

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

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

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

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