Inspirational Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“I did not know then, however, as I do now, the strongest reason for distrust. The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us up big before they prick us.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Till We Have Faces
“who would simply have ignored such a subject out of existence if any modernized booby had been so unfortunate as to raise it in her presence.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“Yes,’ he said, more quietly now. ‘It’s I who should be pitied. It’s I who am asked to give up part of myself. But I’ll do my duty. I’ll not ruin the land to save my own girl… I’m sorry for the girl. But the Priest’s right. Ungit must have her due. What’s one girl—why, what would one man be?—against the safety of us all? It’s only sense that one should die for many. It happens in every battle.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Till We Have Faces
“Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“La urma urmei, sunt două feluri de oameni: unii care îi spun lui Dumnezeu: "Facă-se voia Ta" si alții cărora Dumnezeu le spune: "Facă-se voia ta”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Great Divorce
“No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal—ashamed of being a mortal.’ ‘But how could you help that?’ ‘Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can’t help?”
“when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“It’s strange to think how Bardia went to and fro daily between Queen and wife, well assured he did his duty by both (as he did) and without a thought, doubtless, of the pother he made between them. This is what it is to be a man. The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Till We Have Faces
“There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Great Divorce
“You have done what was required of you,' said the Director. 'You have obeyed and waited.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
“It is the gods who have been accused. They have answered her. If they in turn accuse her, a greater judge and a more excellent court must try the case.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Till We Have Faces
topics: spiritual
“The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from The Great Divorce
“What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from God in the Dock
“Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis.”
“What you have made me see,” answered the Lady, “is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or a setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”
“mere numbers could not overawe us unless we lent them, from our own resources, that awfulness which they themselves could no more supply than a banker’s ledger.”
“What is this that we feel, Tor?' said Tinidril. 'I don't know,' said the King. 'One day I will give it a name. This is not a day for making names.' 'It is like a fruit with a very thick shell,' said Tinidril. 'The joy of our meeting when we meet again in the Great Dance is the sweet of it. But the rind is thick—more years thick than I can count.' 'You see now,' said Tor, 'what that Evil One would have done to us. If we had listened to him we should now be trying to get at that sweet without biting through the shell.' 'And so it would not be "That sweet" at all, said Tinidril.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Perelandra
“And this, O Piebald, is the glory and wonder you have made me see; that it is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good.”
“it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep.”
― C.S. Lewis ,
from Perelandra
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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.