Clive Staples Lewis, commonly known as C. S. Lewis, was a British writer and academic born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was the second son of Albert Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora Hamilton Lewis, a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland.
Lewis was educated at several schools, including Wynyard School in Watford and Malvern College in Worcestershire. In 1916, he was awarded a scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he studied classics and philosophy. However, his studies were interrupted by the First World War, during which he served in the British Army.
You May Also Like: B. F. Skinner Quotes on Learning
After the war, Lewis returned to Oxford and completed his degree in 1920. He then taught at several schools, including Oxford University, where he became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1925. He remained at Oxford for the rest of his academic career, becoming a professor of English Language and Literature in 1954.
Lewis was a prolific writer, producing works in a variety of genres. He is best known for his children’s books, including The Chronicles of Narnia series, which includes seven novels: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and His Boy; The Magician’s Nephew; and The Last Battle. The series has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages.
In addition to his children’s books, Lewis wrote several works of Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and The Screwtape Letters. He was a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the two writers, along with other members of their circle, including Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, were known as the Inklings.
Similar Post: Bad Bunny Quotes About Identity, Politics And Social Justice
Lewis married Joy David man Gresham in 1956, but she died of cancer in 1960. Lewis continued to write and teach until his own death on November 22, 1963, at the age of 64. His legacy as a writer and Christian apologist has continued to influence generations of readers and thinkers.
The profound wisdom of C. S. Lewis as he delves into the depths of faith, love, and the human experience with these inspiring quotes.
Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes
1. “Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
2. “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
3. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
4. “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
5. “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
6. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
7. “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
8. “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
9. “Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
10. “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
Check Out: Benito Mussolini Quotes About War And Nationalism
11. “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
12. “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
13. “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
14. “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
15. “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
16. “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
17. “Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
18. “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
19. “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
20. “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…”
More Quotes: Audre Lorde Quotes About Racism, Sexism & Homophobia
21. “God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
22. “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
23. “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
24. “You can make anything by writing.”
25. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
26. “He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”
27. “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
28. “What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”
29. “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
30. “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.”
Find More: Ayn Rand Quotes Self-Interest And Individual Achievement
31. “Courage, dear heart.”
32. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”
33. “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
34. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
35. “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
36. “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
37. “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”
38. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
39. “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
40. “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
Interesting Quotes: Benito Mussolini Quotes About War And Nationalism
41. “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.”
42. “Things never happen the same way twice.”
43. “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
44. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
45. “That’s the worst of girls,” said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. “They never can carry a map in their heads.”
46. “That’s because our heads have something inside them,” said Lucy.”
47. “The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God’s love for us does not.”
48. “And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
49. “I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
50. “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
More Thoughts: Cardi B Quotes About Attitude, Self-confidence, Empowerment
51. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
52. “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”
53. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
54. “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.”
55. “It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”
56. “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
57. “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.”
58. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
59. “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
60. “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
Wise Words: Clint Eastwood Quotes About Respect, Life & Politics
61. “Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
62. “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
63. “When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”
64. “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
65. “Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
66. “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”
67. “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
68. “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
69. “Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”
70. “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”
Click For More Quotes: Corrie Ten Boom Quotes About Love, Faith and God
71. “Adventures are never fun while you’re having them.”
72. “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”
73. “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
74. “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”
75. “It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed.”
76. “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
77. “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
78. “But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.”
79. “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
80. “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 on earth. Be content.”
Read Also: Daniel Ricciardo Quotes, Funny and Inspirational
81. “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”
82. “Do not dare not to dare.”
83. “But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”
84. “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 the job for me.”
85. “If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
86. “Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”
87. “For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”
88. “Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted—i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk—don’t keep on looking at it.”
89. “You can’t know, you can only believe – or not.”
90. “When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”
You May Also Like: Desmond Tutu Quotes About Social Justice And Equality
91. “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
92. “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. 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.”
93. “One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.”
94. “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
95. “Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
96. “I was with book, as a woman is with child.”
97. “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
98. “The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”
99. “Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
100. “Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.”