“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour. For don't we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive -- who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture -- almost the précis -- we've made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave us free will.”
―
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
“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If you live for the next world, you get this one in the deal; but if you live only for this world, you lose them both.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A woman's heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A man is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility.”
―
C.S. Lewis
