The Four Loves

by C.S. Lewis

A repackaged edition of the revered author's classic work that examines the four types of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God—part of the C. S. Lewis Signature Classics series.

C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of NarniaMere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—contemplates the essence of love and how it works in our daily lives in one of his most famous works of nonfiction. Lewis examines four varieties of human love: affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish. Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God.

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Paperback, 192 pages

Published February 14th 2017 by HarperOne (first published 1960)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, philosophy, christianity, classics, religion, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“Just as there are none good but God, and nothing good but goodness, so there are no loves but love its self, the very love; and that what I call the other unnatural loves, are not loves at all in their own right but become so only so far as they participate in the very love.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Balance, Lewis, Love

“The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without God's help.”

― C.S. Lewis

“Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Game, Laughter, Solemn

“De todos los argumentos contra el amor, ninguno atrae tanto a mi naturaleza como «¡ Cuidado!, eso te puede hacer sufrir». A mi naturaleza, a mi temperamento, sí; pero no a mi conciencia. Cuando me dejo llevar por esa atracción me doy cuenta de que estoy a mil millas de Cristo.”

― C.S. Lewis

“A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”

― C.S. Lewis

“En la amistad —en ese mundo luminoso, tranquilo, racional de las relaciones libremente elegidas— uno se aleja del sistema nervioso y lo animal. De entre todos los amores, ese es el único que parece elevarnos al nivel de los dioses y de los ángeles.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Amistad, Amor, Amor Verdadero, Cristianismo, Instinto, Libertad, Materialismo, Razón, Relaciones Interpersonales, áNgeles

“La amistad debe estar llena de admiración mutua, de amor de apreciación. Necesario será recordarla: sentiremos que somos nosotros mismos —nosotros cuatro o cinco— quienes nos hemos elegido unos a otros; al percibir cada uno la belleza interior de los demás, todos iguales, y formando así una nobleza voluntaria, creeremos que nosotros mismos nos hemos elevado por encima del resto de la humanidad gracias a nuestros propios poderes.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Amistad, Amor, Amor Verdadero, Belleza, Casualidad, Cristianismo, Elección, Recuerdos, Relaciones Interpersonales, Voluntad

“El afecto, ya lo dije, no se da importancia. La caridad —decía san Pablo— no es engreída. El afecto puede amar lo que no es atractivo: Dios y sus santos aman lo que no es amable. El afecto «no espera demasiado», hace la vista gorda ante los errores ajenos, se rehace fácilmente después de una pelea, como la caridad sufre pacientemente, y es bondadoso y perdona. El afecto nos descubre el bien que podríamos no haber visto o que, sin él, podríamos no haber apreciado. Lo mismo hace la santa humildad. Pero si nos detuviéramos sólo en estas semejanzas, podríamos llegar a creer que este afecto no es simplemente uno de los amores naturales sino el Amor en sí mismo, obrando en nuestros corazones humanos y cumpliendo su ley. ¿Tendrían razón entonces los novelistas ingleses de la época victoriana, al decir que es suficiente este tipo de amor? ¿Son «los afectos caseros», cuando están en su mejor momento y en su desarrollo más pleno, lo mismo que la vida cristiana? La respuesta a estas preguntas, lo sé con seguridad, es decididamente No. No digo solamente que esos novelistas escribieron a veces como si nunca hubieran conocido ese texto evangélico sobre el «odiar» a la esposa y a la madre y aun la propia vida —aunque, por supuesto, sea así—, sino que la enemistad entre los amores naturales y el amor de Dios es algo que un cristiano procura no olvidar. Dios es el gran Rival, que en cualquier momento me puede robar —al menos a mí me parece un robo— el corazón de mi esposa, de mi marido o de mi hija.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Afecto, Amor, Amor Verdadero, Caridad, Cristianismo, Dios, Psicología, Relaciones Amorosas, Relaciones Interpersonales

“The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Books, Bookstores, Reading

“It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling could be condemned. As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbours in the local, not of our Neighbour, in the Dominical, sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.”

― C.S. Lewis

“If we cannot 'practice the presence of God', it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep.”

― C.S. Lewis

“Nos acercaremos a Dios no con el intento de evitar los sufrimientos inherentes a todos los amores, sino aceptándolos y ofreciéndoselos a Él, arrojando lejos toda armadura defensiva. Si es necesario que nuestros corazones se rompan y si El elige el medio para que se rompan, que así sea.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Amor, Sufrimiento

“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

― C.S. Lewis

“If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.”

― C.S. Lewis

“our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions”

― C.S. Lewis

“There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Affection, Appreciation, Eros, Friendship, Love

“On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation. We, not they, are out of step.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Friendship, Love

“A man in love wants not a woman, but one particular woman.”

― C.S. Lewis

“si se hace del afecto el amor absoluto de la vida humana, la semilla del odio germinará; el amor, al haberse convertido en dios, se vuelve un demonio.”

― C.S. Lewis

“Tenemos que dar un rodeo, dejar las colinas y los bosques y volver a nuestros estudios, a la iglesia, a nuestra Biblia y a ponernos de rodillas. De otro modo, el amor por la naturaleza empezaría a convertirse en una religión de la naturaleza, y entonces, aun cuando no nos condujera a «los oscuros dioses de la sangre», nos llevaría a un alto grado de insensatez.”

― C.S. Lewis

topics: Agnosticismo, Ateísmo, Biblia, Cristianismo, Iglesia, Naturaleza, Naturalismo, New Age, Paganismo, Religión

C.S. Lewis

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.
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