The quotations of

C. S. Lewis

British writer, lay theologian, and scholar

1898–1963

151 quotes, most often on God, Christianity and Morality. Part of the Writers collection.

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.
The Four Loves (1960), Ch. VI: “Charity”
- Love
Love, while always forgiving of imperfections and mistakes, can never cease to will their removal.
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’
- Friendship
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.
- God
A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.
The Abolition of Man
- Debate
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.
“Is Theology Poetry?” (1945)
- Christianity
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…
Mere Christianity
- Atheism
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
Answers to Questions on Christianity
- Love
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
The Four Loves (1960), Ch. IV
- Friendship
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
- Morality
A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
- Christianity
A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere⁠—‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
Surprised by Joy (1955), Ch. XII: “Guns and Good Company”
- Atheism
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
- Friendship
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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.
“The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” (1949), p. 292
- Morality
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
God in the Dock (1994) p. 101.
- Christianity

Often credited to C. S. Lewis

Quotes often credited to C. S. Lewis that were said or written by someone else.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn. My God do you learn.
WNWilliam Nicholsonborn 1948Often credited to C. S. Lewis
- Experience
You don’t have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
?UnattributedOften credited to C. S. Lewis
- Theology
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
?UnattributedOften credited to C. S. Lewis
- Age

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