“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
“All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Now sir, said the bulldog in his business-like way. 'Are you a animal, vegetable, or mineral?'
―
C.S. Lewis
“On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it--that disgusts me”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I was with book, as a woman is with child.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Humour is...the all-consoling and...the all-excusing, grace of life.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If the world is meaningless, then so are we; if we mean something, we do not mean alone.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins."
"It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did." And he looked very thoughtful.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”
―
C.S. Lewis
