C. s. lewis quotes

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart

Don't shine so that others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see HIM.

There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.

There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.

If you live for the next world, you get this one in the deal; but if you live only for this world, you lose them both.

To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice.

For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

Evil comes from the ABUSE of free will

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

We all want progress, but if you're 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.

After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.

Every contact you make with everyone you meet will help them or hinder them on their journey to heaven.

Love is more than an emotion, it is a decision.

If nothing in this world satisfies me, perhaps it is because I was made for another world.

Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.

Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.

You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to.

I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.

We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.

We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.

God wants a child's heart and a grownup's head.

In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

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

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

There is someone that I love even though I don't approve of what he does. There is someone I accept though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is......me.

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad.

On the back of Satan's neck is a nail scarred footprint.

Forgiveness does not mean excusing.

I don't pray so that I can change God. I pray so that God can change me.

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord.' It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks

God loves us NOT because we're lovable, because He is love. Not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give.

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

The more pride we have, the more other people’s pride irritates us

In such a fearful world, we need a fearless church

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness.

One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

I gave up Christianity at about 14. Came back to it when getting on for 30. Not an emotional conversion; almost purely philosophical. I didn't want to. I'm not in the least a religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master; but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in.

If we only have the will to walk, then God is pleased with our stumbles.

The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours.

The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can't supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.

The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

God doesn't want something from us. He simply wants us.

Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.

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.

The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.

Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with god.

God, in the end, gives people what they most want, including freedom from himself. What could be more fair?

Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

Provocation doesn't make me ill-tempered: it only shows me how ill-tempered I am.

Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

We meet no ordinary people in our lives.

Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.

A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent.

Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it.

I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.

He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites...He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

God gives His gifts where He finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.

Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.

You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come.

Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.

You must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.'

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.

If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.

Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.

To forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says.

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

Man does not have a soul. He is a soul. He has a body.

A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.

We must stop regarding unpleasant or unexpected things as interruptions of real life. The truth is that interruptions are real life.

I'm not sure God wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to love, and be loved. But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery. Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering.

When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

If you never take risks, you'll never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived.

Nothing is really ours until we share it.

Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.