C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Quotes

• God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

• We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

• We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.

• God is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.

• Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere 'opiate of the people' have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

• Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.

• Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

• 'You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,' said Aslan. 'And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.'

• If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

• If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?

• It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.

• There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

• A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and stratagems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

• Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...

• When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.

• 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.

• Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

• Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.

• Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.

• The surest way of spoiling a pleasure is to start examining your satisfaction.