Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”

“Well sir, if things are real, they're there all the time "Are they?”

“En la amistad —en ese mundo luminoso, tranquilo, racional de las relaciones libremente elegidas— uno se aleja del sistema nervioso y lo animal. De entre todos los amores, ese es el único que parece elevarnos al nivel de los dioses y de los ángeles.”

“La amistad debe estar llena de admiración mutua, de amor de apreciación. Necesario será recordarla: sentiremos que somos nosotros mismos —nosotros cuatro o cinco— quienes nos hemos elegido unos a otros; al percibir cada uno la belleza interior de los demás, todos iguales, y formando así una nobleza voluntaria, creeremos que nosotros mismos nos hemos elevado por encima del resto de la humanidad gracias a nuestros propios poderes.”

“There was a jug of creamy milk for the children (Mr Beaver stuck to beer) and a great lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes, and all the children thought- and I agree with them- that there's nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago. And when they had finished the fish Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle onto the fire, so that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured out.”

“Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well.”

“El afecto, ya lo dije, no se da importancia. La caridad —decía san Pablo— no es engreída. El afecto puede amar lo que no es atractivo: Dios y sus santos aman lo que no es amable. El afecto «no espera demasiado», hace la vista gorda ante los errores ajenos, se rehace fácilmente después de una pelea, como la caridad sufre pacientemente, y es bondadoso y perdona. El afecto nos descubre el bien que podríamos no haber visto o que, sin él, podríamos no haber apreciado. Lo mismo hace la santa humildad. Pero si nos detuviéramos sólo en estas semejanzas, podríamos llegar a creer que este afecto no es simplemente uno de los amores naturales sino el Amor en sí mismo, obrando en nuestros corazones humanos y cumpliendo su ley. ¿Tendrían razón entonces los novelistas ingleses de la época victoriana, al decir que es suficiente este tipo de amor? ¿Son «los afectos caseros», cuando están en su mejor momento y en su desarrollo más pleno, lo mismo que la vida cristiana? La respuesta a estas preguntas, lo sé con seguridad, es decididamente No. No digo solamente que esos novelistas escribieron a veces como si nunca hubieran conocido ese texto evangélico sobre el «odiar» a la esposa y a la madre y aun la propia vida —aunque, por supuesto, sea así—, sino que la enemistad entre los amores naturales y el amor de Dios es algo que un cristiano procura no olvidar. Dios es el gran Rival, que en cualquier momento me puede robar —al menos a mí me parece un robo— el corazón de mi esposa, de mi marido o de mi hija.”

“The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.”

“She stayed behind because she thought it would be worthwhile trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily....”

“The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And”

“Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.”

“¿Por qué, entonces, nos ha dado Dios el libre albedrío? Porque el libre albedrío, aunque haga posible el mal, es también lo único que hace que el amor, la bondad o la alegría merezcan la pena tenerse. Un mundo de autómatas —de criaturas que funcionasen como máquinas— apenas merecería ser creado. La felicidad que Dios concibe para Sus criaturas más evolucionadas es la felicidad de estar libre y voluntariamente unidas a Él.”

“Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile? I think it is, if nothing else, too anthropomorphic. When you come to think of it, it is far more anthropomorphic than picturing Him as a grave old king with a long beard. That image is a Jungian archetype. It links God with all the wise old kings in the fairy-tales, with prophets, sages, magicians. Though it is (formally) the picture of a man, it suggests something more than humanity. At the very least it gets in the idea of something older than yourself, something that knows more, something you can't fathom. It preserves mystery. Therefore room for hope. Therefore room for a dread or awe that needn't be mere fear of mischief from a spiteful potentate. But the picture I was building up last night is simply the picture of a man like S.C. - who used to sit next to me at dinner and tell me what he'd been doing to the cats that afternoon. Now a being like S.C., however magnified, couldn't invent or create or govern anything. He would set traps and try to bait them. But he'd never have thought of baits like love, or laughter, or daffodils, or a frosty sunset. He make a universe? He couldn't make a joke, or a bow, or an apology, or a friend.”

“That is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it. and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible-ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.”

“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. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”

“As of old Phoenician men, to the Tin Isles sailing Straight against the sunset and the edges of the earth, Chaunted loud above the storm and the strange sea's wailing, Legends of their people and the land that gave them birth- Sang aloud to Baal-Peor, sang unto the horned maiden, Sang how they should come again with the Brethon treasure laden, Sang of all the pride and glory of their hardy enterprise, How they found the outer islands, where the unknown stars arise; And the rowers down below, rowing hard as they could row, Toiling at the stroke and feather through the wet and weary weather, Even they forgot their burden in the measure of a song, And the merchants and the masters and the bondsmen all together, Dreaming of the wondrous islands, brought the gallant ship along; So in mighty deeps alone on the chainless breezes blown In my coracle of verses I will sing of lands unknown, Flying from the scarlet city where a Lord that knows no pity, Mocks the broken people praying round his iron throne, -Sing about the Hidden Country fresh and full of quiet green. Sailing over seas uncharted to a port that none has seen.”

“Cutting off a man's fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.”

“I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities,”

“You don’t think – not possibly – not as a mere hundredth chance – there might be things that are real though we can’t see them?”

“حاول أن تستبعد إمكانية الألم المتضمن في نظام الطبيعة و وجود الإرادات الحرة، و ستجد أنك تستبعد الحياة نفسها”