Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“the ultimate purpose of God’s love for all of us human creatures is love.”

“في أيامنا هذه نحن نقصد بصلاح الله حصرياً تقريباً، محبته، و قد نكون على حق في ذلك. في هذا السياق، معظمنا يعني بالحب، اللطف و الحنان، أو الرغبة في رؤية الآخرين أكثر سعادة من النفس، ليس أن نراهم سعداء بهذه الطريقة أو تلك، بل فقط سعداء. فالذي يمكن أن يرضينا حقاً هو إله يقول على أي شيء نحب أن نفعله، "ماذا يهم، طالما أنهم راضون و قانعون؟" في الحقيقة نحن لا نريد "أباً" في السماء قدر ما نريد "جَداً" في السماء، شيخاً عجوزاً مسناً، الذي كما يقولون، "يحب أن يرى الشباب يستمتعون". و الذي خطته لأجل الكون ببساطة أن يُقال فعلياً في نهاية كل يوم، "لقد إستمتع الجميع بوقت طيب" أنا لا أزعم أنني إستثناء لذلك: كنت أرغب كثيراً في أن أعيش في عالم تحكمه مثل هذه الأفكار الخاطئة. لكن حيث أنه من الواضح بشدة أنني لا أستطيع ذلك، و حيث أن لدي سبب لكي أعتقد، رغم ذلك، أن الله محبة، فإني أستنتج أن مفهومي عن الحب يحتاج إلى تصحيح إن الحب هو شيء أكثر صرامة و قوة و روعة من مجرد اللطف. نعم هناك لطف في الحب: لكن الحب واللطف ليا متزامنين و متماثلين”

“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.”

“But oh God, tenderly, tenderly. Already, month by month and week by week you broke her body on the wheel whilst she still wore it. Is it not yet enough?”

“you were speaking just now with a good deal of feeling about Treble Bob—you are not, yourself, by any chance, a ringer?” “Well,” said Wimsey, “I used at one time to pull quite a pretty rope. But whether, at this time of day——”

“The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.”

“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.”

“I cried out for the pain of man, I cried out for my bitter wrath Against the hopeless life that ran For ever in a circling path From death to death since all began; Till on a summer night I lost my way in the pale starlight And saw our planet, far and small, Through endless depths of nothing fall A lonely pin-prick spark of light, Upon the wide, enfolding night, With leagues on leagues of stars above it, And powdered dust of stars below- Dead things that neither hate nor love it Not even their own loveliness can know, Being but cosmic dust and dead. And if some tears be shed, Some evil God have power, Some crown of sorrow sit Upon a little world for a little hour- Who shall remember? Who shall care for it?”

“happiness has always been the result of something more important than itself.”

“end.’ The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your ‘faith’ in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all—not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.”

“you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God. It is an old story and if you want to go into it you will no doubt consult people who have more authority to talk about it than I have. All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts—to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true.”

“El trabajo no será completado en esta vida: pero Él quiere llevarnos lo más lejos posible antes de la muerte. Por tanto no debemos sorprendernos si nos esperan momentos duros.”

“La fe, en el sentido en el que utilizo ahora esa palabra, es el arte de aferrarse a las cosas que vuestra razón ha aceptado una vez, a pesar de vuestros cambios de ánimo. Ya que el ánimo cambiará, os diga lo que os diga vuestra razón.”