“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
“Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. 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 my job for me."
―
C.S. Lewis
“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
―
C.S. Lewis
“It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with god.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Emeth speaking of Aslan, "Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek...And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“That’s true to life.
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or
reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on
thinking about the fact that you suffer.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Each time you fall He'll pick you up. He knows your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.”
―
C.S. Lewis
