Quotes from C. S. Lewis

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

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

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

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!

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.

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.

She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.

Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, 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.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

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.

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.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.

Oh, Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!

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.

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.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.