Lewis Quotes

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

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

We read to know we're not alone.

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.

You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

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.

The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle. From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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.

Jesus!" Luke exclaimed. "Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling.

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

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

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

Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath." "As soon as I’m back on my feet, handsome," said Simon. "I knew we should have left you a rat.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." "I don't much care where –" "Then it doesn't matter which way you go.

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

But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

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

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.

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.

Well, I’m not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I’d rather stay down here and rot." "Forever?" said Simon. "Forever’s an awfully long time." Jace raised his eyebrows. "I knew it," he said. "You want to kiss me, don’t you?

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.

He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

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.

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.

have i gone mad? im afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usualy are.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

No. That's Clary; shes's my best friend." Simon pocketed his phone. "And she has a boyfriend. Like, really, really, really has a boyfriend. The nuclear bomb of boyfriends. Trust me on this one.

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.

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

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.

Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” “Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. “No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter

Why it's simply impassible! Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible? Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!

God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

We meet no ordinary people in our lives.

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

You can make anything by writing.

It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

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

Curiouser and curiouser!

Watching Jace hug Isabelle, she tried to school her features into a happy and loving expression. "Are you all right?" Simon asked, with some concern. "Your eyes are crossing.

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Basia coquum," Simon said. "Or whatever their motto is." "It's 'Descensus Averno facilis est.' 'The descent into hell is easy," said Alec. "You just said "Kiss the cook." "Dammit," said Simon. "I knew Jace was screwing with me.

If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.

One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.

I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.

Courage, dear heart.

I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then

That's why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don't say anything, they just nod. The nod means, 'I' am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,' but they don't say anything because they're Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain.

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

So what was that all about?" "I think," Jace said, "that she asked if she could touch my mango." "She said that?" Jace shrugged. "Yeah, then she gave me her number.

Alice: How long is forever? White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?

Isabelle drifted over, Jace a pace behind her. She was wearing a long black dress with boots and an even longer cutaway coat of soft green velvet, the color of moss. "I can't believe you did it!" she exclaimed. "How did you get Magnus to let Jace leave?" "Traded him for Alec," Clary said. Isabelle looked mildly alarmed. "Not permanently?" "No," said Jace. "Just for a few hours. Unless I don't come back," he added thoughtfully. "In which case, maybe he does get to keep Alec. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy." Isabelle looked dubious. "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out." "That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?" Simon inquired. "No, probably not.

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

You're not gay, are you?" Simon's greenish color deepened. "If I were, I would dress better.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?" "But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan. "Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund. "I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where -' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.

No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.

We're all mad here.

Things never happen the same way twice.

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

That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never can carry a map in their heads." "That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy.

The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.

Look," Luke went on, "In all the years I've known him, there's always been exactly one place Simon wanted to be, and he's always fought like hell to make sure he got there and stayed there." "Where's that?" "Wherever you were.

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.

To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

I've got the Mark of Cain," said Simon. "That means nothing can kill me, right?" "You can kill yourself," Magnus said, somewhat unhelpfully. "As far as I know, inanimate objects can accidentally kill you. So if you were planning on teaching yourself the lambada on a greased platform over a pit full of knives, I wouldn't." "There goes my Saturday.

In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.

Jace perched on the windowsill and looked down at him. "You really don't get this bodyguard thing, do you?" "I didn't even think you liked me all that much," said Simon. "Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer things?" "I thought it was keep your friends close so you have someone to drive the car when you sneak over to your enemy's house a night and throw up in his mailbox." "I'm pretty sure that's not it

Isabelle snorted. 'All the boys are gay. In this truck, anyway. Well, not you, Simon.' 'You noticed' said Simon. 'I think of myself as a freewheeling bisexual,' added Magnus. 'Please never say those words in front of my parents,' said Alec. 'Especially my father.' 'I thought your parents were okay with you, you know, coming out,' Simon said, leaning around Isabelle to look at Alec, who was — as he often was — scowling, and pushing his floppy dark hair out of his eyes. Aside from the occasional exchange, Simon had never talked to Alec much. He wasn’t an easy person to get to know. But, Simon admitted to himself, his own recent estrangement from his mother made him more curious about Alec’s answer than he would have been otherwise. 'My mother seems to have accepted it,' Alec said. 'But my father — no, not really. Once he asked me what I thought had turned me gay.' Simon felt Isabelle tense next to him. 'Turned you gay?' She sounded incredulous. 'Alec, you didn’t tell me that.' 'I hope you told him you were bitten by a gay spider,' said Simon. Magnus snorted; Isabelle looked confused. 'I’ve read Magnus’s stash of comics,' said Alec, 'so I actually know what you’re talking about' A small smile played around his mouth. 'So would that give me the proportional gayness of a spider?' 'Only if it was a really gay spider,' said Magnus, and he yelled as Alec punched him in the arm. 'Ow, okay, never mind.