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 these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of ‘religion.’
- Religion
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
The Abolition of Man (1943), Ch. I: “Men without Chests”
- Intelligence
Dualism is a truncated metaphysic.
- Theology
Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.
The Abolition of Man
- Science
There are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious.
An Experiment in Criticism
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.
The Abolition of Man
- Virtue
The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.
The Weight of Glory
The more often a man feels without acting, the less he’ll be able to act. And in the long run, the less he’ll be able to feel.
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
Reasoning is never, like poetry, judged from the outside at all.
A Preface to Paradise Lost
The absent are easily refuted.
- Debate
The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.
The World’s Last Night (1952)
- Christianity
They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived.
That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 13: They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads
- Journalism
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), Ch. 1
- Comedy
God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.
The Problem of Pain (1940), Ch. X: “Heaven”
- God
- Love

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