CS Lewis Quotes

You do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but you have lost love because you never attempted obedience.

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that morn.

The only thing that follows work is results.

Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.

I think that fans are always looking for someone to blame. Wouldn't it be nice if they looked in the mirror?

A little lie is like a little pregnancy it doesn't take long before everyone knows.

You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.

Man believes in the possible, but God believes in the impossible.

I know who I am. I don't have to brag. I know what I contributed. I know what I did. You think you can do it better? Hey, go right ahead. The stage is yours.

If any fall by the hand of violence, others will continue the blessed work.

In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.

Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do.

From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.

What do they teach them at these schools?

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.

I'm a happy person but an angry citizen.

We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

It is worth starting with visions, though, because they establish hopes and fears. History then determines which prevail.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.

Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!

There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.

Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain?

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!

This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!

I desired dragons with a profound desire.

I play in the low 80s. If it's any hotter than that, I won't play.

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.

Something of God... flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.

If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.

Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!

Adventures are never fun while you're having them.

And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.

Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.

The worst thing you can do to a kid is tell them that their dreams are invalid.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love.

It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.

The great city is the best organ of memory man has yet created.

It is because they have no Oyarsa,' said one of the pupils. It is because everyone of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,' said Augray.

I#pray because the need flows out of me all the time-walking and sleeping. It does not change #‎ God - it changes me.

I am a product [...of] endless books.

Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you'd never know which were which.

True citizens are not the audience of their government, nor its consumers; they are its makers.