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.

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.
The Problem of Pain (1940), Ch. IV: “Human Wickedness”
- Virtue
Other than heaven, the only place where one’s heart is completely safe from the dangers of love is hell.
- Theology
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
The Last Battle
- Happiness
Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.
The Problem of Pain
- Christianity
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard.
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1963)
- Prayer
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
The Screwtape Letters (1942), Letter XXV
- Time
Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it.
- Experience
You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the univerise in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.
Mere Christianity (1952), Book I, Chapter 5, “We Have Cause to Be Uneasy”
- God
- Morality
You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Mere Christianity
- Morality
God is not proud…He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.
The Problem of Pain (1940), Ch. VI
- God
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
Mere Christianity (1952), Book I, Chapter 5, “We Have Cause to Be Uneasy”
- Success
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
Mere Christianity (1952) ch. 1
- God
If the universe is so bad…how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
The Problem of Pain
- God
When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right.
- Morality
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, Chapter 10, “Hope”
- Christianity

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