C. S. Lewis Quotes

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile.

There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.

We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

Christians don't think God will love us because we're good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. ... He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. ... You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

...eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Of course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, [...] 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.

Deus sussurra a nós na saúde e prosperidade, mas, sendo maus ouvintes, deixamos de ouvir a voz de Deus. Então ele gira o botão do amplificador por meio do sofrimento. Aí então ouvimos o ribombar de sua voz.

Os livros ou a música onde pensamos estar a beleza nos trairão se confiarmos neles... Pois eles não são a coisa em si; eles são somente o aroma de uma flor que não encontramos, o eco de um tom que ainda não ouvimos, notícias de um país que nunca visitamos.