CS Lewis Quotes

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

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

"Courage, dear heart."

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less."

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn."

"We read to know we are not alone."

"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?"

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

"Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success."

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career."

"Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably."

"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning."

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."

"Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will ‘turn the necessity to glorious gain."

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

"True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less."

"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."

"Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things."

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."

"Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward."

"Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will turn the necessity to glorious gain."

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains."

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

"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."

"Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature."

"Joy is the serious business of Heaven."

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere."

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

"Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them."

"The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not."

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

"An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason."

"History isn't just the story of bad people doing bad things. It's quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong."

"A 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."

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth."

"The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil."

"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."

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original."

"The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

"The stupidest children are often the most childish, and the stupidest grown-ups are often the most grown-up."

"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story."

"Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."

"Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods."

"Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it."

"The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are."