Quotes from C. S. Lewis

In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.

Nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.

Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

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.

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

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

Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease?

When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks

Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

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

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.

Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.

Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent.