C. S. Lewis Quotes

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C. S. Lewis

Profession : Writer

Birth : November 29, 1898

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis

We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.

C. S. Lewis

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

C. S. Lewis

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

C. S. Lewis

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

C. S. Lewis

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

C. S. Lewis

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.

C. S. Lewis

'The Lion' all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, 'Let's try to make a story about it.'

C. S. Lewis

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

C. S. Lewis

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

C. S. Lewis

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

C. S. Lewis

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

C. S. Lewis

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. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

C. S. Lewis

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

C. S. Lewis

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

C. S. Lewis

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

C. S. Lewis

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

C. S. Lewis

Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

C. S. Lewis

Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.

C. S. Lewis

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

C. S. Lewis