Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. 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 with, and, in the end, despair.”

“If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?”

“As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago. And while he thinks that, [he will not repent] of a definite, fully recognized, sin, ... only [vaguely and uneasily] feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately... If such a feeling is allowed to live... it increases reluctance to think about [God]. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold. They hate every idea that suggests Him, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a bankbook. In this state... {man] will increasingly dislike his religious duties. He will think about them as little as he feels he decently can beforehand, and forget them as soon as possible when they are over. He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with [his Heavenly Father]... Uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness...”

“No te engañes, Orugario. Nuestra causa nunca está tan en peligro como cuando un humano, que ya no desea pero todavía se propone hacer la voluntad de nuestro Enemigo, contempla un universo del que toda traza de Él parece haber desaparecido, y se pregunta por qué ha sido abandonado, y todavía obedece. Pero,”

“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.”

“Consequently, when Christ becomes man it is not really as if you could become one particular tin soldier. It is as if something which is always affecting the whole human mass begins, at one point, to affect the whole human mass in a new way. From that point the effect spreads through all mankind. It makes a difference to people who lived before Christ as well as to people who lived after Him. It makes a difference to people who have never heard of Him. It is like dropping into a glass of water one drop of something which gives a new taste or a new colour to the whole lot. But, of course, none of these illustrations really works perfectly. In the long run God is no one but Himself and what He does is like nothing else. You could hardly expect it to be otherwise.”

“In Mere Christianity, no less than in his more fantastical works, the Narnia stories and science fiction novels, Lewis betrays a deep faith in the power of the human imagination to reveal the truth about our condition and bring us to hope. “The longest way round is the shortest way home”2 is the logic of both fable and of faith.”

“leemos la historia veremos que los cristianos que más hicieron por este mundo fueron aquellos que pensaron más en el otro. Los apóstoles mismos, que iniciaron a pie la conversión del Imperio Romano, los grandes hombres que construyeron la Edad Media, los Evangélicos ingleses que abolieron el mercado de esclavos, todos ellos dejaron su marca sobre la tierra, precisamente porque sus mentes estaban ocupadas en el cielo.”

“During one walk, Jack engaged in the first metaphysical argument that he can remember. It concerned the nature of the future: Is it like a line that you can’t see or a line that is not yet drawn? He would delight in such arguments for the rest of his life.”

“Ya sé que hemos conquistado muchas almas por medio del placer. De todas maneras, el placer es un invento Suyo, no nuestro. Él creó los placeres; todas nuestras investigaciones hasta ahora no nos han permitido producir ni uno. Todo lo que podemos hacer es incitar a los humanos a gozar los placeres que nuestro Enemigo ha inventado, en momentos, o en formas, o en grados que Él ha prohibido.”

“Elkerülhetetlen, hogy jóság és gonoszság egymás mellett ne tanyázzék páciensedben. A lényeg az, hogy rosszindulatát közvetlen felebarátaira irányítsd, akikkel naponta találkozik, jóindulatát viszont told ki egy távoli körre, olyan emberekre, akiket nem ismer. Rosszindulata így egészen valóságos lesz, jóindulata viszont képzeletbeli.”

“3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed. 4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most over-sensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: ‘I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.’ Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.”

“Nunca olvides que cuando estamos tratando cualquier placer en su forma sana, normal y satisfactoria, estamos, en cierto sentido, en el terreno del Enemigo. Por eso tratemos siempre de alejarnos de la condición natural de un placer hacia lo que en él es menos natural, lo que menos huele a su Hacedor, y lo menos placentero. La fórmula es un ansia siempre creciente de un placer siempre decreciente. Es más seguro, y es de mejor estilo. Conseguir el alma del hombre y no darle nada a cambio: eso es lo que realmente alegra el corazón de Nuestro Padre.”

“Tenemos todo lo que queremos” es un dicho terrible cuando “todo” no incluye a Dios. Hallamos a Dios una interrupción. Como dice San Agustín en alguna parte, “Dios quiere darnos algo, pero no puede, porque nuestras manos están llenas —no hay donde Él pueda ponerlo”.”

“This cold truth, this terrible traffic-regulation (‘You, Madam, to the right—you, Sir, to the left’) is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.”

“يشق على نفس الله كثيراً أن يكون علينا أن نختاره كبديل للجحيم؛ و رغم ذلك فإنه يقبل حتى هذا الإختيار”

“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.”

“الطبيعة الثابتة الدائمة للخشب التي تمكننا من أن نستخدمه كعارضة، تمكننا أيضاً من أن نستخدمه كعصا لضرب جارنا على رأسه. و هكذا فإن الطبيعة الثابتة للمادة تعني عامةً أنه عندما يتشاجر البشر، فإن الفوز يكون عادةً من نصيب أولئك الذين لديهم أسلحة و مهارة و أعداد أفضل، حتى لو كانت قضيتهم جائرة و غير عادلة”

“had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age of mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic-regulation”

“ربما يمكننا أن نتخيل عالماً يقوم فيه الله كل لحظة بتصحيح نتائج إساءة إستخدام مخلوقاته لإرادته الحرة: بحيث تصبح العارضة الخشبية لينة مثل العشب عندما يتم إستخدامها كسلاح، و يرفض الهواء طاعتي إذا حاولت أن أبث فيه الموجات الصوتية التي تحمل الأكاذيب و الشتائم. لكن مثل هذا العالم سيكون عالماً تصبح فيه الأفعال الخاطئة مستحيلة، و بالتالي تكون حرية الإرادة فيه باطلة و عقيمة”