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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Inspirational Quotations by C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was a British academic, novelist, broadcaster, religious writer, literary scholar, and children’s writer.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Lewis was the son of a solicitor. He was wounded in World War I, attended Oxford’s University College as a classicist, but made his career in English literature. Though a theological layman, Lewis became widely known as one of the most important Christian apologetics writers of the 20th century. His books The Problem of Pain (1940,) Miracles (1947,) and The Four Loves (1960) were highly influential. Lewis’s great reputation was largely due to his popular radio talks on religious themes, collected in Mere Christianity (1952.)

He held academic positions at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He created the imaginary land of ‘Narnia’ for a series of seven fantasy stories, which began with the heavily allegorical and highly successful The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by C. S. Lewis

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Wishes

Do not dare not to dare.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Adventure

We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
—C. S. Lewis

To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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
Topics: Heart, Love

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Wishes, Atheism

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
—C. S. Lewis

The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: God

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Feelings

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Giving, Charity

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It’s not the sort of comfort they supply there.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Prayer

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Religion

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Self-Control

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.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Miracles

We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Prayer

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Heaven

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is?. Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?. If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Character

We turn first ter the bleedin’ parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Guvnor Cruickshank ter make manifest Massinger’s indebtedness. I’ll get out me spoons. One of the surest of tests is the way in wich a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets nick; bad poets deface wot they take, and right good poets make it into sumfink better, or at least sumfink different. The bloody right good poet welds ‘is theft into a ‘oole of feelin’ wich is unique, right, utterly different from that from wich it were torn; the bad poet frows it into sumfink wich ‘as no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from auffors remote in time, or alien in ‘am sandwich, right, or diverse in interest. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne. The bleedin’ two great followers of Shakespeare, Webster and Tourneur, in their mature work do not borrow from ‘im; ‘e is too close ter ffem ter be of use ter ffem in this way. Massinger, as Guvnor Cruickshank shows, borrows from Shakespeare a right good deal.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Poetry, Authors & Writing

We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: God

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Joy, Pleasure, Excitement

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: God

Don’t say it was “delightful” make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do the job for me.”
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Writing

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.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Writing

Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Growth

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Reason

Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
—C. S. Lewis

The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Evangelism

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Religion

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.
—C. S. Lewis

If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Desires, Explanation

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
—C. S. Lewis
Topics: Religion, Questions, God

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