C. S. Lewis
No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'
C. S. LewisEvery poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. LewisNo man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.
C. S. LewisCourage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
C. S. LewisThis year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
C. S. LewisThe future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
C. S. LewisThe real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
C. S. LewisAim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. LewisOf all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
C. S. LewisA pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.
C. S. LewisA man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
C. S. LewisFailures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
C. S. LewisIt's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
C. S. LewisYou don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
C. S. LewisThere is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.
C. S. LewisIf we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
C. S. LewisHas this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C. S. LewisEven in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. LewisCourage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. LewisPart of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
C. S. LewisNo one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.
C. S. LewisIf you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
C. S. LewisCan a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
C. S. LewisIt may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
C. S. LewisEducation without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C. S. Lewis