Quotes from C. S. Lewis

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step. For lasting passion is the dream of a harlot, and from it we wake in despair.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.

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.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest....

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.

There are two kinds of people those who say to God, Thy will be done, and those to whom God says, All right, then, have it your way.

Time and tides wait for none

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

You are never too old to dream a new dream or set another goal.

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

Christianity, if false, is not important. If Christianity is true, however, it is of infinite importance. What it cannot be is moderately important.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because I see everything by it.

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.

Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

A woman means by unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others. Thus each sex regards the other as basically selfish.

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.