Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“For the rest, all that rises out of the sea of arithmetic is a jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered.”
“Now it must be noticed that the natural loves make this blasphemous claim not when they are in their worst, but when they are in their best, natural condition; when they are what our grandfathers called ‘pure’ or ‘noble’. This is especially obvious in the erotic sphere. A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. Merely animal or frivolous lust will not. It will corrupt its addict in a dozen ways, but not in that way; a man may act upon such feelings but he cannot revere them any more than a man who scratches reveres the itch.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Four Loves
“-¡Ooh!-dijo Susan-. Pensaba que era un hombre. ¿No es peligroso? Me pone un poco nerviosa la idea de encontrarme con un león. -Lo entiendo, querida, y es comprensible- indicó la señora Castor-, si existe alguien capaz de presentarse ante Aslan sin que le tiemblen las rodillas, o bien es más valiente que la mayoría o es sencillamente un tonto. -Entonces ¿es peligroso?- dijo Lucy. -¿Peligroso?- contestó el señor Castor-. ¿No has oído lo que ha dicho la señora Castor? ¿Quién ha dicho que no sea peligroso? Claro que es peligroso. Pero es bueno. Es el rey, ya os lo he dicho.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“I don't like being reminded about how self-absorbed I was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didn't want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasn't trying to weasel out of anything, I just wasn't in the mood to be on the earth that night. (I get like this sometimes when it rains, or when I see certain sad movies).”
“There were birds singing close to a window; there was real sunlight falling on a panel. That panel needed repainting; but I could have gone down on my knees and kissed its very shabbiness - the precious real, solid thing it was.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Shoddy Lands
“But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him.”
“The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact 7that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.”
“...if ever consciously directs his prayers "Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be", our situation is, for the moment, desperate.”
topics: prayer
“It was in a different place, and approaching their knowledge from the other side, that they had discovered the state of Merlin: not from inspection of the thing that slept under Bragdon Wood, but from observing a certain unique configuration in that place where those things remain that are taken off time’s mainroad, behind the invisible hedges, into the unimaginable fields. Not all the times that are outside the present are therefore past or future.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“What pitiable cant to say, 'She will live forever in my memory!' Live? That is exactly what she won't do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What's left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word dead. It was H. I loved. As if I wanted to fall in love with my memory of her, an image of my own mind! It would be a sort of incest.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from A Grief Observed
“No, no hay salida. No hay cielo que contenga un poco de infierno. No hay plan que mantenga esto o aquello del demonio en nuestros corazones o en nuestros bolsillos. Nuestro Satán debe marcharse, completamente.” GEORGE MACDONALD”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“In his company she had that curious sensation which most married people know of being with someone whom (for the final but wholly mysterious reason) one could never have married but who is nevertheless more of one’s own world than the person one has married in fact. As”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“Pam, Pam—no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Great Divorce
“Much that was unjust and still more that was simply unintelligible seemed to be accepted, not only without resentment, but with a certain satisfaction provided only that it was striking. Even about his present situation he showed very much less curiosity than Mark would have thought possible. It did not make sense, but then the man did not expect things to make sense. He deplored the absence of tobacco and regarded the “Foreigners” as very dangerous people; but the main thing, obviously, was to eat and drink as much as possible while the present conditions lasted.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“What I'd like to understand," said the Ghost, "is what you're here for, as pleased as Punch, you, a bloody murderer, while I've been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigstye all these years." "That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no neet to bother about it." "No need to bother about it? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" "No, not as you mean. I do not look at my self. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Great Divorce
“I did not know then, however, as I do now, the strongest reason for distrust. The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us up big before they prick us.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Till We Have Faces
“who would simply have ignored such a subject out of existence if any modernized booby had been so unfortunate as to raise it in her presence.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
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Clive Staples Lewis was born in Ireland, in Belfast on 29 November 1898. His mother was a devout Christian and made efforts to influence his beliefs. When she died in his early youth her influence waned and Lewis was subject to the musings and mutterings of his friends who were decidedly agnostic and atheistic. It would not be until later, in a moment of clear rationality that he first came to a belief in God and later became a Christian.
C. S. Lewis volunteered for the army in 1917 and was wounded in the trenches in World War I. After the war, he attended university at Oxford. Soon, he found himself on the faculty of Magdalen College where he taught Mediaeval and Renaissance English.
Throughout his academic career he wrote clearly on the topic of religion. His most famous works include the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia. The atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge tended to skepticism. Lewis used this skepticism as a foil. He intelligently saw Christianity as a necessary fact that could be seen clearly in science.
"Surprised by Joy" is Lewis's autobiography chronicling his reluctant conversion from atheism to Christianity in 1931.