“He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods; the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the 'Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You'll never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking what sort of impression you make.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“This is my password," said the King as he drew his sword. "The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You have a traitor there, Aslan," said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he'd been through and after the talk he'd had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn't seem to matter what the Witch said.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”
―
C.S. Lewis
