Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“The real difficulty is, isn’t it, to adapt ones steady beliefs about tribulation to this particular tribulation; for the particular, when it arrives, always seems so peculiarly intolerable.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Made for Heaven
“Friday 14 April: Last night I had a ridiculous dream of Squire’s sending back my poem and saying he could not accept it because I spelt the word ‘receive’ wrongly: and sure enough, the first post brought the poem back! I intend to hammer away for a bit at him yet.”
“Left the poem at the typists and sent off the two others: looking in a copy of the English Review for its address, I was disgusted by the poetry in it—all in the worst modern tradition—and half thought of not sending mine. But I decided I need not be nice, as I shall almost certainly be rejected anyway.”
“Only Maureen, thro’ stupidity or heroism, remains in excellent spirits.”
“This morning the fates tried to infuriate me but carried it too far, so that I became merely funny.”
“This morning the fates tried to infuriate me but carried it too far, so that it became merely funny.”
“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. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“After this I read Macdonald’s Phantastes over my tea, which I have read many times and which I really believe fills for me the place of a devotional book. It tuned me up to a higher pitch and delighted me.”
“The allegorical sense of her great action dawned on me the other day. The precious alabaster box wh. one must break over the Holy Feet is one’s heart. Easier said than done. And the contents become perfume only when it is broken. While they are safe inside they are more like sewage. All v. alarming. —from a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 1, 1954”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilisation are the only people by whom civilisation is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”
“We then drifted into a long talk about ultimates. Like me, he has no belief in immortality etc., and always feels the materialistic pessimism at his elbow.”
“They wanted, as we say, to “call their souls their own.” But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. —from The Problem of Pain”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him ‘the spectator’, if not of all, yet of much, ‘time and existence’.”
“The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the reascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit. —from Miracles”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“We discussed The Turn of the Screw: he agrees with me that the boy is ‘saved’ in the last scene. We talked of Emma: he liked it, but parts of it made him ‘writhe’.”
“I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason.”
“In theological language, no man can be saved by works.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“I argued that immortality—which he believes in—was not likely to fall to the lot of everyone, since ‘gift is contrary to the nature of the universe’. He on the other hand is confident that we should all be immortal anyway: he gave me the impression of believing in Heaven but not in Hell, nor in any conditions attaching to Heaven.”
“You may defy the universe. You may say, 'Let it be irrational, I am not. Let it be merciless, I will have mercy. By whatever curious chance it has produced me, nowt that I am here I will according to human values. I know the universe will win in the end, but what is that to me? I will go down fighting. Amid all the wastefulness I will persevere; amid all this competition, I will make sacrifices. Be damned to the universe!”
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Clive Staples Lewis was born in Ireland, in Belfast on 29 November 1898. His mother was a devout Christian and made efforts to influence his beliefs. When she died in his early youth her influence waned and Lewis was subject to the musings and mutterings of his friends who were decidedly agnostic and atheistic. It would not be until later, in a moment of clear rationality that he first came to a belief in God and later became a Christian.
C. S. Lewis volunteered for the army in 1917 and was wounded in the trenches in World War I. After the war, he attended university at Oxford. Soon, he found himself on the faculty of Magdalen College where he taught Mediaeval and Renaissance English.
Throughout his academic career he wrote clearly on the topic of religion. His most famous works include the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia. The atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge tended to skepticism. Lewis used this skepticism as a foil. He intelligently saw Christianity as a necessary fact that could be seen clearly in science.
"Surprised by Joy" is Lewis's autobiography chronicling his reluctant conversion from atheism to Christianity in 1931.