Favorite Quotes from C. S. Lewis
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?
-C. S. Lewis
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.
-C. S. Lewis
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.
-C. S. Lewis
In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
-C. S. Lewis
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.”
-C. S. Lewis
I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.
-C. S. Lewis
To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.
-C. S. Lewis
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.
-C. S. Lewis
Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them.
-C. S. Lewis
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred.
-C. S. Lewis
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
-C. S. Lewis
If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.
-C. S. Lewis
Each time you fall He'll pick you up. He knows your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection.
-C. S. Lewis
The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.
-C. S. Lewis
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 any 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 being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, 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. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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. -C.S. Lewis
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning. -C.S. Lewis
How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.
-C. S. Lewis
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. - C. S. Lewis
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing yet had been done. -C. S. Lewis
No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. -C. S. Lewis
The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything. -C. S. Lewis
When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. -C. S. Lewis
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there. There is no such thing. -C. S. Lewis
God loves us not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give. -C. S. Lewis
The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love does not. -C. S. Lewis
So often, whether for good or ill, one's inner state seems to have so little connection with the circumstances. - C. S. Lewis
The greatest blessing you bring to your family is the presence of God in your life. The fragrance of His presence sweetens the atmosphere of your home. The beauty of His presence warms the relationships within its walls. The joy of His presence lightens every heart. The glory of His presence fills all its chambers with rare and precious treasures. -C. S. Lewis
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. -C. S. Lewis
Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying. -C. S. Lewis
He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone. -C. S. Lewis
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. -C. S. Lewis
We are like blocks of stone from which the Sculptor carves a form. The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect. -C. S. Lewis
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
-C. S. Lewis
-C. S. Lewis
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.
-C. S. Lewis
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.
-C. S. Lewis
In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
-C. S. Lewis
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.”
-C. S. Lewis
I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.
-C. S. Lewis
To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.
-C. S. Lewis
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.
-C. S. Lewis
Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them.
-C. S. Lewis
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred.
-C. S. Lewis
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
-C. S. Lewis
If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.
-C. S. Lewis
Each time you fall He'll pick you up. He knows your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection.
-C. S. Lewis
The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.
-C. S. Lewis
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 any 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 being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, 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. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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. -C.S. Lewis
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning. -C.S. Lewis
How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.
-C. S. Lewis
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. - C. S. Lewis
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing yet had been done. -C. S. Lewis
No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. -C. S. Lewis
The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything. -C. S. Lewis
When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. -C. S. Lewis
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there. There is no such thing. -C. S. Lewis
God loves us not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give. -C. S. Lewis
The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love does not. -C. S. Lewis
So often, whether for good or ill, one's inner state seems to have so little connection with the circumstances. - C. S. Lewis
The greatest blessing you bring to your family is the presence of God in your life. The fragrance of His presence sweetens the atmosphere of your home. The beauty of His presence warms the relationships within its walls. The joy of His presence lightens every heart. The glory of His presence fills all its chambers with rare and precious treasures. -C. S. Lewis
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. -C. S. Lewis
Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying. -C. S. Lewis
He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone. -C. S. Lewis
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. -C. S. Lewis
We are like blocks of stone from which the Sculptor carves a form. The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect. -C. S. Lewis
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
-C. S. Lewis