Quotes from Clive Staple Lewis                        index              contents

Clive Staple Lewis (1898-1963) was in my opinion one of the great literary figures of our time, perhaps of all times. His excellence in such divergent fields as scholarship, literary criticism, theology, apologetics, fiction, scientifiction (as he called it), children's fiction, autobiography set him apart from nearly all of his contemporaries. Lewis once said that reading Chesterton would cause one to grow in mental health. If I'm not mistaken, Chesterton had said the same about reading Samuel Johnson. Well, reading Lewis will cause one to grow mental health, mental clarity, appreciation of literature, and Christian charity.

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.  The Allegory of Love

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.  The Abolition of Man

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.  Mere Christianity

If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes...it cuts its own throat.  A Christian Reply to Professor Price

Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe. Christian Reflections

A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.  Christian Reflections

The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.   Christian Reflections

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you'll find your real self. Lose your life and you'll save it. Submit to death, death of your ambition and favourite wishes every day and the death of your body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back. Nothing that you have not given away will ever 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.  Beyond Personality

The new Narnia … was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean. It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: "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. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. … Come further up, come further in!   Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle

Broaden your mind, Malcolm, broaden your mind! It takes all sorts to make a world; or a church. This may be even truer of a church. If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and Heaven will display far more variety than Hell. 'One fold' doesn't mean 'one pool.' Cultivated roses and daffodils are no more alike than wild roses and daffodils. Letters to Malcomb

That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt; but whether this eternal fixity implied endless duration--or duration at all--we cannot say...I notice that Our Lord, while stressing the terror of Hell with unsparing severity, usually emphases the idea not of duration but of finality.   The Problem of Pain

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.  The Problem of Pain

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside.  The Problem of Pain

If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows...then we must starve eternally.  The Problem of Pain

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.  The Problem of Pain

[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.  The Problem of Pain

Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless. The Problem of Pain

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.  The Problem of Pain

All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.  The Problem of Pain

[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.  The Problem of Pain

The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.  The Problem of Pain

God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.  The Problem of Pain

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.  But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so.  Some day, God willing, we shall get in.  Weight of Glory

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each on of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.  Weight of Glory

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.  Weight of Glory

You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.  Weight of Glory

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'   Weight of Glory

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.  Weight of Glory

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.    Weight of Glory

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.

But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.  The Last Battle  

Victorian philosophers--favored members of the happiest class in the happiest country in the world at the world's happiest period.  'Evil and God,' God in the Dock

The decline of 'religion' is no doubt a bad thing for the 'World.' By it all the things that made England a fairly happy country are, I suppose, endangered: the comparative purity of her public life, the comparative humanity of her police, and the possibility of some mutual respect and kindness between political opponents. But I am not clear that it makes conversions to Christianity rarer or more difficult: rather the reverse. It makes the choice more unescapable.  When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone.  'The Decline of Religion,' God in the Dock

...every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception. You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.  'First and Second Things,' God in the Dock

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.  'On The Reading Old Books,'  God in the Dock

The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.  Mere Christianity

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails...If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft.  Mere Christianity

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.  Mere Christianity

Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self.  Mere Christianity

All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.  Mere Christianity

The natural life in each of us is something self-centered, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe.  Mere Christianity

[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centeredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.  Mere Christianity

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is the hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ.  Mere Christianity

Safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other.  The Case for Christianity

A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.  The Abolition of Man

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.  The Abolition of Man

The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.  The Abolition of Man

Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.  The Abolition of Man

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.  The Abolition of Man

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike that he ought...Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful.  The Abolition of Man

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

[One] can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity.  The Problem of Pain

From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.  The Problem of Pain

Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.  The Problem of Pain

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

It now seemed that...the deepest thirst within him was not adapted to the deepest nature of the world. The Pilgrim's Regress

Though I do not believe that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.  Transposition and Other addresses

He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.  Transposition and Other Addresses

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness.  Transposition and Other addresses

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.  Till We Have Faces

"You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.  The Silver Chair

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.  The Silver Chair

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.  Surprised by Joy

The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary colour in the spectrum.  Christian Reflections

The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. Christian Reflections

History is a story written by the finger of God.  Christian Reflections

The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.  Encounter With Light

'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver...'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The idea which...shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience.  The World's Last Night

And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies' plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.  The Last Battle

The essence of religion, in my view, is the thirst for an end higher than natural ends.  A Christian Reply to Professor Price' Phoenix Quarterly

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.  The Four Loves

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.  Miracles

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this is rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

Nothing that has not died will be resurrected.  "Membership," Weight of Glory

Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why worldlings  are so monotonously alike compared to the almost fantastic variety of the saints.  Membership

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden - that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.  Mere Christianity

I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, and essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended; while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.  The World's Last Night

Frantic administration of panaceas to the world is certainly discouraged by the reflection that "this present" might be "the world's last night; sober work for the future, within the limits of ordinary morality and prudence, is not.  For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil.  The curtain has indeed now fallen.  The pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery of Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory.  No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.  The World's Last Night

I conclude, then, that logic is a real insight into the way in which real things have to exist. In other words, the laws of thought are also the laws of things.  --

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask—half of our great theological and metaphysical problems—are like that… 

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.  --     C. S. Lewis Anthology, A Mind Awake, by Clyde S. Kilby