Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“It was likely, then that this—-this stumbling walk on a wet night across a ploughed field-—meant death. Death—-the thing one had always heard of (like love), the thing the poets had written about. So this was how it was going to be. But that was not the main point.”

“You see, I don't think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12….”

“The duty of planning tomorrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present.”

“The Calormens have dark faces and long beards. They wear flowing robes and orange-colored turbans, and they are a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people. They bowed most politely to Caspian and paid him long compliments all about the fountains of prosperity irrigating the gardens of prudence and virtue --and things like that-- but of course what they wanted was the money they had paid.”

“Sexual appetite, like any other appetite, grows by indulgence”

“Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”

“People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them, and if you're there you can hardly help feeling that you're out of it.”

“Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.”

“Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms. Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops. Soon there were more wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers- celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it they found snowdrops growing.”

“That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bit and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.”

“Divine punishment are also mercies.”

“The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter but because he is fighting for his life and therefore moving it very quickly.”

“To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that.”

“Thanks for my life, my cure, my breakfast - and my lesson.”

“We all want progress, but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

“Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different.”

“Jesus Christ was either a liar, a lunatic, or He was who He said He was”

“Child,' said Aslan, 'did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?' 'Yes, Aslan, you did,' said Lucy. 'I'm sorry. But please-' 'Speak on, dear heart.' 'Shall I ever be able to read that story again: the one I couldn't remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.' 'Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.”

“There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in damnation: what Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell. They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle over the gas ring.”

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”