Immediately upon hearing his name, lions, witches, and wardrobes may fill your head.
But C.S. Lewis was far more verbose than his 7 book series.
Here is a list of some of his best quotes:
On Christianity:
“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.”
“When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you were the only person in the world.”
On God:
“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.”
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word “darkness” on the walls of his cell.”
“Look for Christ and you will find Him. And with Him, everything else.”
On Heaven:
“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”
“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.”
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
On Happiness:
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
On Love:
“You cannot love a fellow creature fully until you love God.”
On Forgiveness:
“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
On Humility:
“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see something that is above you.”
On Friendship:
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
On Imagination:
“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
On Personal Thoughts:
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only–and that is to support the ultimate career.”
“Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.”
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
“Don’t shine so others can see you. Shine so that through you others can see Him.”
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was born in Belfast, Ireland to a family that held what he called a “blandly Christian” faith.
As a boy, he had no personal relationship with God, but from childhood, God continued to pursue him with probing questions on Greater Things, coupled by an incredibly wild imagination to wonder over these questions.
His entrance through scholarship to Oxford University set him up on the path God would platform His Glory from, later in years. However, as he began English studies, he quickly and publicly denied the existence of God whatsoever.
There is a period of years in which Lewis left the University for the military, but later returned as a revered Fellow. It was in this reentrance that “Jack” (as he was known in his teaching days) met and joined forces with a literary circle called The Inklings. His time as Professor of English Literature at Oxford University lasted from 1925-1954.
One other respected member of The Inklings was J.R.R. Tolkien. It was Tolkien’s influence and persistent speaking of God into Lewis’ life that eventually caused Lewis’ conscience no option but to face the impending reality he sensed.
Speaking of his conversion experience, Lewis says:
“You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
His journey through atheism into conversion to Christianity provided Lewis with unique perspective. Reason was very important to him, especially during his time as an atheist. The fact that God Is Reason is the main trigger that set his soul ablaze in converting.
He could no longer deny that Truth must be present for any true understanding to be present. This path gave him the boldness and wisdom to write on many Christian ideas with a more honest eye than most other writers before or after him.
In the years that followed, combined with years of brilliance even before that point, Lewis had written over 30 books of varying literary style, though always full of mind-blowing imagery.
On the other side of his imagination, he gained perspective on many real-life matters which led to a list of essays and general responses to the human condition and society around him.
His greatest literary influence was fantasy and the imaginative worlds such as George MacDonald’s work “The Phantastes” which captured him leading to a talking animal series called Boxen.
Boxen was a co-work with him and his brother who he adored, and is full of imaginary animals having all sorts of adventures.
In response to MacDonald’s work, he later reports: “I knew that I had crossed a great frontier.”
As an adult, his own biographic site mentions that his academic studies “were steeped in chivalric literature and medieval legends.”
But he does not hide the spiritual but also imaginative literary influence that came by “a decades-long friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.”
According to the C.S. Lewis Foundation, his “most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.”
whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
His journey through atheism into conversion to Christianity provided Lewis with unique perspective. Reason was very important to him, especially during his time as an atheist. The fact that God Is Reason is the main trigger that set his soul ablaze in converting.
He could no longer deny that Truth must be present for any true understanding to be present. This path gave him the boldness and wisdom to write on many Christian ideas with a more honest eye than most other writers before or after him.
In the years that followed, combined with years of brilliance even before that point, Lewis had written over 30 books of varying literary style, though always full of mind-blowing imagery.
On the other side of his imagination, he gained perspective on many real-life matters which led to a list of essays and general responses to the human condition and society around him.
His greatest literary influence was fantasy and the imaginative worlds such as George MacDonald’s work “The Phantastes” which captured him leading to a talking animal series called Boxen.
Boxen was a co-work with him and his brother who he adored, and is full of imaginary animals having all sorts of adventures.
In response to MacDonald’s work, he later reports: “I knew that I had crossed a great frontier.”
As an adult, his own biographic site mentions that his academic studies “were steeped in chivalric literature and medieval legends.”
But he does not hide the spiritual but also imaginative literary influence that came by “a decades-long friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.”
According to the C.S. Lewis Foundation, his “most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.”
