C. S. Lewis Les Quotations

Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my conversion. Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?

Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.

In Charn [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.

Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger". "That is because you are older, little one" answered he. "Not because you are?" "I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".

Christian principles are, admittedly, stricter than the others; but then we think you will get help towards obeying them which you will not get towards obeying the others.

They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of curse it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.

It is because they have no Oyarsa,' said one of the pupils. It is because everyone of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,' said Augray.

Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.

Now sir, said the bulldog in his business-like way. 'Are you a animal, vegetable, or mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew

[The witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants everyone to use what sense they have.

Our problem with desire is that we want too little.

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself

Good and evil increase at compound interest. That's why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance.

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away.

when pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

Music. A meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience.

I am a product [...of] endless books.

In such a fearful world, we need a fearless church

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work build up in him a sense of being really at home on earth which is just what we want.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.

Our problem is not that we desire too much but too little.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

Everything that is not eternal is worthless in eternity.

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

It is often little things that are hardest to stand.

Is any pleasure on Earth as great as a circle of Christian friends?

As for wrinkles--Pshaw! Why shouldn't we have wrinkles? Honorable insignia of long service in this warfare.

I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.

At the end of all things, the blessed will say, 'We never lived anywhere but in heaven.'

The assumption that things which have been conjured in the past will always be conjured in the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behavior.

A blessed spirit is a mould ever more and more patient of the bright metal poured into it, a body ever more completely uncovered to the meridian blaze of the spiritual sun.

The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.

Though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God's eyes; that is, in our deepest reality.

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

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

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that morn.

A man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ verse latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

You can do more with a castle in a story than with the best cardboard castle that ever stood on a nursery table.

Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii if a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.

But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself.

They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.

Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.

This wasn't a garden,' said Susan presently. 'It was a castle...

Your people eat dry and tasteless flesh but it is off plates as smooth as ivory and as round as the sun.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us... While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

You can give the Devil too much or too little attention.

All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only beloved who will never pass away.

I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you - the part that chooses - into something a little different than what it was before. Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

You have gone into the Temple...and found Him, as always, there.

Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.

Of Course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did, He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is)... Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

To say the very thing you mean,the whole of it,nothing more or less or other than what you really mean,that is the whole art and joy of words.