Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis

“For the same reason we ought to read the psalms that curse the oppressor; read them with fear. Who knows what imprecations of the same sort have been uttered against ourselves? What prayers have Red men, and Black, and Brown and Yellow, sent up against us to their gods or sometimes to God Himself? All over the earth the White Man’s offence ‘smells to heaven’: massacres, broken treaties, theft, kidnappings, enslavement, deportation, floggings, lynchings, beatings-up, rape, insult, mockery, and odious hypocrisy make up that smell.”

“Ştiu că plăcerea ne-a câştigat o mulţime de suflete. Cu toate acestea, e invenţia Lui, nu a noastră. El a inventat plăcerile: în ciuda cercetărilor noastre de până acum, noi n-am reuşit să producem nici una. Tot ce putem face e să-i încurajăm pe oameni să guste din plăcerile pe care le-a inventat Duşmanul, dar în momente, sau în moduri, sau în măsuri pe care El le-a interzis.”

“Valoarea reală, în ce ne priveşte, a oricărei revoluţii, conflagraţii sau perioade de foamete stă în spaima, înşelăciunea, ura, furia şi disperarea individuală pe care ele le pot produce. (...) Dar e mult mai valoros ca scop în sine, anume ca stare de spirit care va duce în mod necesar la excluderea simplităţii, a dragostei pentru semeni, a împăcării şi a tuturor mulţumirilor date de recunoştinţă şi admiraţie, şi astfel va îndepărta fiinţa umană de orice cale care i-ar putea conduce paşii către Rai.”

“Prezentul este punctul anume în care timpul întâlneşte eternitatea.”

“我們”

“Among flippant people, the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.... [Flippancy] is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.”

“I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.”

“Doch diejenigen, die mich auffordern, an diesem Weltbild [Evolutionstheorie] zu glauben, wollen mich auch glauben machen, dass die Vernunft lediglich ein unvorhergesehenes und unbeabsichtigtes Nebenprodukt unbelebter Materie in einem Stadium ihrer endlosen und ziellosen Bewegung ist. Ist das nicht ein glatter Widerspruch?”

“The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”

“All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.”

“The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.”

“Of course I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. Hence, while He is delighted to see them sacrificing even their innocent wills to His, He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason. And we should always encourage them to do so. The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him. To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human’s own real likings and dislikings. I myself would carry this very far. I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such”

“Olhei e vi a última coisa que esperava ver: um enorme leão avançando para mim. E era estranho porque, apesar de não haver lua, por onde o leão passava havia luar. Foi chegando, chegando. E eu, apavorado. Você talvez pense que eu, sendo um dragão, poderia derrubar a fera com a maior facilidade. Mas não era esse tipo de medo. Não temia que me comesse, mas tinha medo dele... não sei se está entendendo o que quero dizer... Chegou pertinho de mim e me olhou nos olhos. Fechei os meus, mas não adiantou nada, porque ele me disse que o seguisse.”

“Becoming the Enemy Where the tide flows towards increasing State control, Christianity, with its claims in one way personal and in the other way ecumenical and both ways antithetical to omnicompetent government, must always in fact (though not for a long time yet in words) be treated as an enemy. Like learning, like the family, like any ancient and liberal profession, like the common law, it gives the individual a standing ground against the State. Hence Rousseau, the father of the totalitarians, said wisely enough, from his own point of view, of Christianity, je ne connais rien de plus contrarie a l’esprit social [I know nothing more opposed to the social spirit] . . . . What a society has, that, be sure, and nothing else will it hand on to its young. The work is urgent, for men perish around us.”

“AN EXPLANATION OF TIME: “Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity . . . . But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except”

“Because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but we cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgment: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”

“To know what would happen, No. Nobody is every told that.”

“Come on,' said Peter suddenly to Edmund and Lucy. 'Our time's up.' 'What do you mean?' said Edmund. 'This way,' said Susan, who seemed to know all about it. 'Back into the trees. We've got to change.' 'Change what?' asked Lucy. "Our clothes, of course,' said Susan. 'Nice fools we'd look on the platform of an English station in these.' 'But our other things are at Caspian's castle,' said Edmund. 'No, they're not,' said Peter, still leading the way into the thickest wood. 'They're all here. They were brought down in bundles this morning. It's all arranged.' 'Was that what Aslan was talking to you and Susan about this morning?' asked Lucy. 'Yes - that and other things,' said Peter, his face very solemn. 'I can't tell it to you all. There were things he wanted to say to Su and me because we're not coming back to Narnia.' 'Never?' cried Edmund and Lucy in dismay. 'Oh, you two are,' answered Peter. 'At least, from what he said, I'm pretty sure he means you to get back some day. But not Su and me. He says we're getting too old.' 'Oh, Peter,' said Lucy. 'What awful bad luck. Can you bear it?' 'Well, I think I can,' said Peter. 'It's all rather different from what I thought. You'll understand when it comes to your last time. But, quick, here are our things.”

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different...”

“During one walk, Jack engaged in the first metaphysical argument that he can remember. It concerned the nature of the future: Is it like a line that you can’t see or a line that is not yet drawn? He would delight in such arguments for the rest of his life.”