C. S. Lewis

God is not merely good but goodness goodness is not merely divine but God.

If you look upon ham and eggs and lust you have already committed breakfast in your heart.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

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.

I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.

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

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another What You too I thought I was the only one

The point is that for our ancestors, the universe was a picture; for modern physics it is a story.

The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.

All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status always reminds beckons awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.

I was not born to be free, I was born to adore and obey.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.

If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.

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.

We are what we believe we are.

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

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

Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.

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.

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.

The perfect church servicewould be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

People blush at praise not only praise of their bodies but praise of anything that is theirs.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

I have learned now that while those who speak about ones miseries usually hurt those who keep silence hurt more.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.

there are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created.

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.

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

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.'

Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions not sins. Like all afflictions they are if we can so take them our share in the passion of Christ.

An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another What You too I thought I was the only one.

Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it.

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

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us it is the very sign of His presence.

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

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

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

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.

I'm tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

We have had enough once and for all of Hedonism the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good.

What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?

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.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny...

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

It is Christ Himself not the Bible who is the true Word of God. The Bible read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him.

Agnostics talk cheerfully of man's search for God but they might as well talk about the mouse's search for the cat.

Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.

Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.

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.

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

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."

The value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling.

The naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists.

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If you insist on keeping hell or even earth you will never see heaven. If you accept heaven you will not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell

What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.

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

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.

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

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

If we let ourselves we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.

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

A clever arrangement of bad eggs will never make a good omelet.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

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.