Many of us may remember the awe and wonder we felt when Lucy first encountered the world of Narnia after walking through an old wardrobe. The inventive man and author of the Chronicles of Narnia is the distinguished writer and lay theologian, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), better known to the world as C.S. Lewis.
In a career that took him to the hallowed halls of Oxford and Cambridge where he was professor of English and long-time friend of J.R.R. Tolkien (author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy), C.S. Lewis authored over 30 books, including The Space Trilogy and non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain, all of which have become classics. Below, are some of the greatest C.S. Lewis quotes, taken from his fictional as well as non-fictional writings.
On Romantic Relationships
“If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
“People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.”
“It is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.”
On Spirituality
“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.”
On the Christian Faith
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
“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.”
“God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
“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.”
On Reading and Writing
“I am a product […of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic … In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”
“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.”
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
“You can make anything by writing.”
“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise, you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
The Problem of Pain
“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 course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
On Staying Young-at-Heart
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 … I put away the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
On the Art of Attentiveness
“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.”
On Hope
“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”
On Living without Regrets
“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.”
On Being Curious
“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”