Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“the loving and the devouring are all one”

“When we merely say that we are bad, the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness.”

“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—that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.”

“Hours later there came a change. It began to grow light in the bus. The greyness outside the windows turned from mud-colour to mother of pearl, then to faintest blue, then to a bright blueness that stung the eyes. We seemed to be floating in a pure vacancy. There were no lands, no sun, no stars in sight: only the radiant abyss.”

“Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it’s ill talking of such questions.’ ‘Because they are too terrible, Sir?’ ‘No. Because all answers deceive.”

“Into an allegory a man can put only what he already knows; in a myth he puts what he does not yet know and could not come by in any other way.”

“If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old.”

“His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.”

“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”

“Don’t you remember on earth—there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”

“And the Saved?" "Ah, the Saved...what happens to them is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery, turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water.”

“Now then, now then,” came the Cabby’s voice, a good firm, hardy voice. “Keep cool everyone, that’s what I say. No bones broken, anyone? Good. Well there’s something to be thankful for straight away, and more than anyone could expect after falling all that way. Now, if we’ve fallen down some diggings—as it might be for a new station on the Underground—someone will come and get us out presently, see! And if we’re dead—which I don’t deny it might be—well, you got to remember that worse things ’appen at sea and a chap’s got to die sometime. And there ain’t nothing to be afraid of if a chap’s led a decent life. And if you ask me, I think the best thing we could do to pass the time would be to sing a ’ymn.” And he did. He struck up at once a harvest thanksgiving hymn, all about crops being “safely gathered in.” It was not very suitable to a place which felt as if nothing had ever grown there since the beginning of time, but it was the one he could remember best. He had a fine voice and the children joined in; it was very cheering. Uncle Andrew and the Witch did not join in.”

“But does it mean that everything-everything-that is in us can go on to the Mountains? Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard coma red with a stallion? Lust is poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when list has been killed….Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But it may well be that at this moment she's demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it. No, no. Ye must draw another lesson. Ye must ask, if the risen body even of appetite is as a grand a horse as ye saw, what would the risen body of maternal love or friendship be?”

“The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.”

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

“I am not concerned at present with blame; I am trying to find out truth.”

“It’s because you’re a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.”

“Do we suppose that they can do Him any good or fear, like the chorus in MIlton, that human irreverence can bring about. His glory's diminution? A man can no more diminish God's glory be refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell. But God wills our good and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatives) and to love Hi we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain. Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine live, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to put on Christ, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.”

“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder , till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”

“Watchin' and listenin' is the thing at present; not talking.”