Quotations of selected author

Clive Staples Lewis

1898 - 1963. Irish novelist and Christian apologist, author of "The Chronicles of Narnia".


1. "Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head but don't be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud, one is safe from the worst form of pride."

source: letter to Mrs. Sonia Graham

categories: Various


2. "With the cruelty of youth I allowed myself to be irritated by traits in my father which, in other elderly men, I have since regarded as lovable foibles."

source: "Surprised By Joy"

categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Youth and Age


3. "This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: Human -:- Manners and Ethics


4. "The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity."

categories: Reality and Imagination


5. "The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

source: "The Chronicles of Narnia"

categories: Wisdom and Stupidity


6. "The descent to hell is easy, and those who begin by worshipping power soon worship evil."

source: "The Allegory of Love"

categories: Power and Weakness -:- Good and Evil


7. "Often when I pray I wonder if i am not posting letters to a non-existent address."

categories: God and Religion


8. "Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: God and Religion



9. "It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort; it's not the sort of comfort they supply there."

source: "Letters of C. S. Lewis"

categories: Happiness -:- Joy and Sadness


10. "In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice."

source: "God In The Dock"

categories: Human -:- Nature and Animals -:- Good and Evil


11. "Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: God and Religion


12. "If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: God and Religion


13. "If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a "wandering to find home", why should we not look forward to the arrival?"

categories: Human


14. "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."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: Dreams and Desires


15. "Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. [...] As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time."

source: "The Screwtape Letters"

categories: Human


16. "Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."

categories: Destiny and Fate -:- Various


17. "Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way you react to it."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: Good and Evil


18. "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."

source: "The Problem of Pain"

categories: Pain and Tears


19. "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

source: "Mere Christianity"

categories: God and Religion -:- Reality and Imagination



20. "Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment."

source: "The Problem of Pain"

categories: Good and Evil


21. "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."

categories: Bravery and Fear


22. "All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. "

categories: Time and Passing