Explore Quotes by C. S. Lewis

We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.

Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

The promise, made when I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love.

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up.

Every day in a life fills the whole life with expectations and memory.

The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.

Chronological snobbery is the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively), or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.

Pain plants the flag of truth within a rebel fortress.

The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself

Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning.

We shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.

When we are wholly His we will be more ourselves than ever.

The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one.

Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours.

If there ever was a time that nothing existed, then nothing would exist now

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into a glory