C.S. Lewis
British writer, lay theologian, and scholar (1898–1963)
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- Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
- 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.
- Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
- Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is
- If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
- We read to know we are not alone.
- 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....
- A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you.
- Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
- There, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be '˜debunked;' but watch the faces, mark the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire equality, they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.
- You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
- We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ''Blessed are they that mourn.''
- Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
- Though our feelings come and go, God's love for us does not.
- Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained
- Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods
- Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
- 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.
- You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
- Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
- What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands
- We ought to give thanks for all fortune: it is is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country
- 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.
- When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the religion of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes