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.

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents⁠—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts⁠—i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy⁠—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?

I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.

It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
- Science
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.
- Writing
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
- Happiness
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.
The Abolition of Man (1943), Ch. I
- Men
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.
- Pride
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
A Grief Observed (1961), Pt. IV
- God
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Mere Christianity (1952), Book II, Chapter 3, “The Shocking Alternative”
- God
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
The Screwtape Letters (1942), Letter XXIX
- Courage
You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.
The Abolition of Man
- Philosophy
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.
Christian Reflections
- Freedom
Surely what a man does when he is caught off his guard is the best evidence as to what sort of man he is.
Mere Christianity
- Morality
- Virtue
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can’t really get rid of it.
The Case for Christianity
- Morality
It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.
A Grief Observed (1961), Pt. I
- Life & Death
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.
- Art
- Writing
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1949), “Membership”
- Friendship

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