Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”

“grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.”

“حقيقة أن الله يمكنه أن يصنع خيراً مركباً من الشر البسيط لا تُبرر – رغم أنها بالرحمة يمكن أن تخلّص – أولئك الذين يصنعون الشر البسيط. لأنك بالتأكيد ستحقق غرض الله، بأية طريقة تتصرف بها، لكن الإختلاف يكمن بالنسبة لك فيما إذا كنت تخدمه مثل يهوذا أم مثل يوحنا”

“I can’t understand this. There is not a breath of wind. The sail hangs dead. The sea is as flat as a pond. And yet we drive on as fast as if there were a gale behind us.” “I’ve been thinking that, too,” said Caspian. “We must be caught in some strong current.” “H’m,” said Edmund. “That’s not so nice if the World really has an edge and we’re getting near it.” “You mean,” said Caspian, “that we might be just--well, poured over it?” “Yes, yes,” cried Reepicheep, clapping his paws together. “That’s how I’ve always imagined it--the World like a great round table and the waters of all the oceans endlessly pouring over the edge. The ship will tip up--stand on her head--for one moment we shall see over the edge--and then, down, down, the rush, the speed--” “And what do you think will be waiting for us at the bottom, eh?” said Drinian. “Aslan’s country, perhaps,” said the Mouse, its eyes shining. “Or perhaps there isn’t any bottom. Perhaps it goes down for ever and ever. But whatever it is, won’t it be worth anything just to have looked for one moment beyond the edge of the world.” “But look here,” said Eustace, “this is all rot. The world’s round--I mean, round like a ball, not like a table.” “ world is,” said Edmund. “But is this?” “Do you mean to say,” asked Caspian, “that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you’ve never told me! It’s really too bad of you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I always loved them. I never believed there were any real ones. But I’ve always wished there were and I’ve always longed to live in one. Oh, I’d give anything--I wonder why you can get into our world and we never get into yours? If only I had the chance! It must be exciting to live on a thing like a ball. Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?” Edmund shook his head. “And it isn’t like that,” he added. “There’s nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you’re there.”

“For in grief nothing stays put. One keeps emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats.”

“In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him — if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking — then you could not have a game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any such life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

“It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”

“the greater the love the greater the grief, and the stronger the faith the more savagely will Satan storm its fortress.”

“Well, well. What can’t be cured must be endured. This is our last hope gone. We shall be reduced to ringing minors.”

“All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.”

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”

“I look around the empty room, The clock still ticking in its place, And all else silent as the tomb, Till suddenly, I think, a face”

“The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this ‘Gospel’ no Gospels would ever have been written.”

“I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.”

“But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christlife inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

“it may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, "i'm not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own." Then she goes up one night and finds the teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible. it is probably the same in the universe. God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right.”

“It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost His crucifixion.”

“Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.”

“Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer.”