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.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“Answers to Questions on Christianity”
Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods, and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“Learning in War-Time”
The word religion is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practices to which we give the collective name of religion are themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one’s attention fixed on God and on one’s neighbor in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn’t the time. Religion is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from the outside.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“Lilies that Fester,” The Twentieth Century (Apr 1955)
Democracy demands that little men shouldn’t take big ones too serious; it dies when it’s full of little men who think they are big themselves.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“Notes on the Way,” Time and Tide (29 Apr 1944)
To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“On Forgiveness”
There are many different ways of bringing people into his Kingdom, even some ways that I specially dislike! I have therefore learned to be cautious in my judgment.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis,” Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Decision (Sep 1963)
Full text.
Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis,” Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Decision (Sep 1963)
Full text.
Such a book has of course its predestined readers, even now more numerous and more critical than is always realised. To them a reviewer need say little, except that here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The Gods Return to Earth,” Time and Tide (14 Aug 1954)
Book review of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. Full text.
We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who are the minor characters. The Author knows. … But we, never seeing the play from the outside, … cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come. That it will come when it ought, we may be sure. … That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it. When it is over, we may be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us who has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The World’s Last Night”
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not now either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening towards active assistance, is simply bad.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
The value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
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.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
There seems no plan because it’s all plan. There seems no center because it’s all center.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)
Your bid–for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity–will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high. Nothing will shake a man–or at any rate a man like me–out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed
What do people mean when they say, “I am not afraid of God because I know He is good”? Have they never been to a dentist?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed (1961)
Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed (1961)
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, “So, there’s no God after all,” but, “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed, ch. 1
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them — never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed, ch. 4 (1960)
It is in their ‘good’ characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self-revelations.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942)
People blush at praise — not only praise of their bodies, but praise of anything that is theirs.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942)
Disobedience to conscience is voluntary; bad poetry, on the other hand, is usually not made on purpose.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942)
In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
An Experiment in Criticism (1961)
Good and evil both increase at compound interest.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Christian Behavior
We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
God in the Dock
I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands “Thus saith the Lord,” it lies, and lies dangerously.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
God in the Dock, “Is Progress Possible?” (1958)
You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humour while roaring with laughter.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
God in the Dock, “Myth Become Fact” (1970)
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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 own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
God in the Dock, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” (1970)
Indeed, in so far as things unseen are manifested by the things seen, one might from one point of view call the whole material universe an allegory.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters of C.S. Lewis (10 Dec. 1956)
Well, let’s go on disagreeing but don’t let us judge. What doesn’t suit us may suit possible converts of a different type. My model here is the behaviour of the congregation at a ‘Russian Orthodox’ service, where some sit, some lie on their faces, some stand, some kneel, some walk about, and no one takes the slightest idea of what anyone else is doing. That is good sense, good manners, and good Christianity.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters of C.S. Lewis (13 Mar 1956)
Apologetic work is so dangerous to one’s faith. A doctrine never seems dimmer to me than when I have just successfully defended it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters of C.S. Lewis (2 Aug. 1946)
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters of C.S. Lewis (29 Apr. 1959)
God loves us; not because we are loveable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters of C.S. Lewis (undated)
Humans are very seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often themselves quite mistaken as to what their motives are.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to an American Lady (28 Mar. 1961)
May God’s grace give you the necessary humility. Try not to think — much less, speak — of their sins. One’s own are a much more profitable theme! And if, on consideration, one can find no faults on one’s own side, then cry for mercy: for this must be a most dangerous delusion.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to an American Lady (9 Jan 1961)
And I also remember that my apparent self — this clown or hero or super — under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but — what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to Malcolm
I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say “act”. For what I call “myself” (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called “introspection”, are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction “me”‘ and the stage set “the real world”. … I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to Malcolm
Suppose I pray that you may be given grace to withstand your besetting sin (short list of candidates for this post will be forwarded on demand). Well, all the work has to be done by God and you. If I pray against my own besetting sin there will be work for me. One sometimes fights shy of admitting an act to be a sin for this very reason.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to Malcolm, ch. 12
We should never ask of anything “Is it real?,” for everything is real. The proper question is “A real what?,” e.g., a real snake or real delirium tremens?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letters to Malcolm, ch. 15
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. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, 3.9 (1952)
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, Bk. III, ch. 10
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.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, Bk. IV, ch. 7
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, Book 2 “What Christians Believe,” ch. 1 “The Rival Conceptions of God” (1943)
(Source)
No one can settle how much we ought to give. I’m afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare,
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, ch. 3 “Social Morality” (1952)
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, Preface (1943)
You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. … You never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, rev. ed., 3.11 (1952)
The first step toward humility is to realize that one is proud.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, rev. ed., 3.11 (1952)
Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Miracles, ch. 1
When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Of Other Worlds (1952)
‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.’
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Prince Caspian (1951)
We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Reflections on the Psalms, ch. 12
If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Reflections on the Psalms, ch. 3 “The Cursings” (1958)
Full text.
Many things — such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly — are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, “Edmund Spenser” (1966)
Full text. This chapter of the book was originally printed in Major British Writers, ed. G. B. Harrison (1959).
Many things — such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly — are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966)
The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Surprised by Joy (1955)
[T]hat intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
That Hideous Strength (1945)
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war…. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest .
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Abolition of Man
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Abolition of Man, ch. 1
Whenever you find a man who says he doesn’t believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Case for Christianity (1942)
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Case for Christianity (1942)
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can’t really get rid of it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Case for Christianity (1942)
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 save 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.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Four Loves
Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Four Loves, ch. 3 “Friendship” (1960)
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Four Loves, ch. 4
“Well,” says the ghostly ex-cleric, “really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will it leave me the free play of Mind, Dick? I must insist on that, you know.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
“You have gone far wrong,” Dick replies, “Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage”
The Great Divorce
There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Great Divorce
The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art. But lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Great Divorce
“Milton was right,” said my Teacher. “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Great Divorce, ch. 9
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Great Divorce, ch. 9
Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Great Divorce, ch. 9 (1946)
There is something awfully nice about reading a book again, with all the half-unconscious memories it brings back.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (16 Nov. 1915)
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.” I know I am very fortunate in that respect.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (29 Dec. 1935)
Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (30 May 1916)
‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver … ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Magician’s Nephew (1955)
What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Pilgrim’s Regress, Bk. 7, Ch. 9
Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
In some way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
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 (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
I fully embrace the maxim (which … borrows from a Christian) that ‘all power corrupts.’ I would go further. The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments. All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives. Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Thus the Renaissance doctrine of Divine Right is for me a corruption of monarchy; Rousseau’s General Will, of democracy; racial mysticisms, of nationality. And Theocracy, I admit and even insist, is the worst corruption of all.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
[God] makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain, ch. 10
I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain, ch. 8
A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Letter XXVI
The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint … but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, rev. ed., Introduction (1942, 1982)
‘You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,’ said the Lion.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Silver Chair (1953)
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Weight of Glory, “Membership” (1945)
Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, “The Efficacy of Prayer” (1959)
Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, “The World’s Last Night” (1952)
To play well the scenes in which we are ‘on’ concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The World’s Last Night (1960)
To love involves trusting the beloved beyond the evidence, even against much evidence. No man is our friend who believes in our good intentions only when they are proved. No man is our friend who will not be very slow to accept evidence against them. Such confidence, between one man and another, is in fact almost universally praised as a moral beauty, not blamed as a logical error.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The World’s Last Night, “On Obstinacy in Belief” (1955)
He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself ….
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Transposition and Other Addresses (1949)
We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter (29 Apr 1959)
[O]ften when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don’t think so — the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter to Arthur Greaves (24 Dec 1930)
I think 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 (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter to Miss Breckenridge (19 Apr 1951)
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