C. S. Lewis Quotes
Clive Staples Lewis was born on the 29th of November, 1898 in Belfast, United Kingdom. He was a British writer and lay theologian. C. S. Lewis held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University.
Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy. Lewis died of kidney failure on the 22nd of November, 1963 in Oxford, United Kingdom.
Below, you will find famous C.S Lewis quotes about God, love, religion, life and education.
80 C. S. Lewis Quotes About Life, God & Education
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”– C.S. Lewis
“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”– C.S. Lewis
“It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”– C.S. Lewis
“There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.”– C.S. Lewis
“Good English’ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.”– C.S. Lewis
“Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”– C.S. Lewis
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”– C.S. Lewis
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”– C.S. Lewis
“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”– C.S. Lewis
“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.”– C.S. Lewis
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”– C.S. Lewis
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” – C.S. Lewis
“Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.”– C.S. Lewis
“It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God.”– C.S. Lewis
“Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.”– C.S. Lewis
“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”– C.S. Lewis
“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”– C.S. Lewis
“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, and in the end, despair.”– C.S. Lewis
“God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. You are as much alone with him as if you were the only being he had ever created.”– C.S. Lewis
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”– C.S. Lewis
“You can never get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”– C.S. Lewis
“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.”– C.S. Lewis
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”– C.S. Lewis
“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”– C.S. Lewis
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” – C.S. Lewis
“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”– C.S. Lewis
“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”– C.S. Lewis
“When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.”– C.S. Lewis
“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all.”– C.S. Lewis
“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”– C.S. Lewis
“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.”– C.S. Lewis
“Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.”– C.S. Lewis
“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”– C.S. Lewis
“This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.”– C.S. Lewis
“Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.”– C.S. Lewis
“For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”– C.S. Lewis
“You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.”– C.S. Lewis
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”– C.S. Lewis
“History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.”– C.S. Lewis
“Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.”– C.S. Lewis
“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”– C.S. Lewis
“If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?”– C.S. Lewis
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”– C.S. Lewis
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”– C.S. Lewis
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”– C.S. Lewis
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”– C.S. Lewis
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”– C.S. Lewis
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”– C.S. Lewis
“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.”– C.S. Lewis
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”– C.S. Lewis
“Though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.” – C.S. Lewis– C.S. Lewis
“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.”– C.S. Lewis
“We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies, but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”– C.S. Lewis
“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito.”– C.S. Lewis
“If you’re thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you’re embarking on something, which will take the whole of you.”– C.S. Lewis
“It cost God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost him crucifixion.”– C.S. Lewis
“God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.”– C.S. Lewis
“To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?”– C.S. Lewis
“A woman’s heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her.” – C.S. Lewis
“The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life.”– C.S. Lewis
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”– C.S. Lewis
“There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”– C.S. Lewis
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”– C.S. Lewis
“It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”– C.S. Lewis
“We do not want merely to see beauty… We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”– C.S. Lewis
“The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”– C.S. Lewis
“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.”– C.S. Lewis
“Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”– C.S. Lewis
“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you do, and you will presently come to love him.”– C.S. Lewis
“The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.”– C.S. Lewis
“When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.”– C.S. Lewis
“You must ask for God’s help. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.”– C.S. Lewis
“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”– C.S. Lewis
“Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.”– C.S. Lewis
“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”– C.S. Lewis
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”– C.S. Lewis
“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”– C.S. Lewis
“One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness.”– C.S. Lewis
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”– C.S. Lewis