C. S. Lewis Quotes

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you're making.

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.

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

"They call him Aslan in That Place," said Eustace.
"What a curious name!"
"Not half so curious as himself," said Eustace solemnly.

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.

Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

But then again of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all.

You don’t think – not possibly – not as a mere hundredth chance – there might be things that are real though we can’t see them? … If there are souls, could there not be soul-houses?

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

"Are the gods not just?"

"Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?"

The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?