C.S. Lewis, born 1898 in Belfast, was a renowned scholar, novelist and Christian apologist.
He attended Oxford, served in World War I and later became a professor at Cambridge.
Initially an aspiring poet, Lewis shifted to prose after his poetry garnered little interest.
His first successful fiction was Out of the Silent Planet and his scholarly work, The Allegory of Love, established his reputation in British literary studies.
Renowned works like The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters popularized him as a Christian beliefs’ expositor.
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His famed series, The Chronicles of Narnia, has been widely adapted. Lewis died in 1963.
In this article, I have picked the popular quotes by C. S. Lewis for you to read.
Best C. S. Lewis Quotes
If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties. ~ C. S. Lewis.
God doesn’t want something from us. He simply wants us. ~ C. S. Lewis.
To walk out of His will is to walk into nowhere. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed. ~ C. S. Lewis.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Adventures are never fun while you’re having them. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We are what we believe we are. ~ C. S. Lewis.
True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s, we do not accept them easily enough. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours. ~ C. S. Lewis.
A woman’s heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. It doesn’t change God – it changes me. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If you’re thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you’re embarking on something, which will take the whole of you. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Famous C. S. Lewis Quotes
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You can make anything by writing. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. ~ C. S. Lewis.
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. ~ C. S. Lewis.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Top C. S. Lewis Quotes
What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Do not dare not to dare. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It cost God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost him crucifixion. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I was with book, as a woman is with child. ~ C. S. Lewis.
For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Popular C. S. Lewis Quotes
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You can never get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. ~ C. S. Lewis.
A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose. ~ C. S. Lewis.
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Great C. S. Lewis Quotes
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When you are arguing against God you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Inspiring C. S. Lewis Quotes
She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different… ~ C. S. Lewis.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Things never happen the same way twice. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ~ C. S. Lewis.
I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life. ~ C. S. Lewis.
God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. You are as much alone with him as if you were the only being he had ever created. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Great C. S. Lewis Quotes
You must ask for God’s help. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. ~ C. S. Lewis.
A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You can’t know, you can only believe – or not. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. ~ C. S. Lewis.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Wise C. S. Lewis Quotes
All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think. ~ C. S. Lewis.
With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. ~ C. S. Lewis.
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Good English’ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If one could run without getting tired I don’t think one would often want to do anything else. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The death of a beloved is an amputation. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There would be no sense in saying you trusted Jesus if you would not take his advice. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies, but he hopes he’ll never have to use it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Courage, dear heart. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Thought-Provoking C. S. Lewis Quotes
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C. S. Lewis.
To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself? ~ C. S. Lewis.
It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. ~ C. S. Lewis.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We meet no ordinary people in our lives. ~ C. S. Lewis.
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Suspicion often creates what it suspects. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning. ~ C. S. Lewis.
He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Powerful C. S. Lewis Quotes
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now? ~ C. S. Lewis.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. ~ C. S. Lewis.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you do, and you will presently come to love him. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony. ~ C. S. Lewis.
But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Profound C. S. Lewis Quotes
Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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. ~ C. S. Lewis.
All get what they want; they do not always like it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
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… ~ C. S. Lewis.
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal. ~ C. S. Lewis.
History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive. ~ C. S. Lewis.
This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Inspirational C. S. Lewis Quotes
One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We do not want merely to see beauty… We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. ~ C. S. Lewis.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. ~ C. S. Lewis.
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Forgiveness does not mean excusing. ~ C. S. Lewis.
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in! ~ C. S. Lewis.
Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere. ~ C. S. Lewis.
We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Put first things first and second things are thrown in. Put second things first and you lose both first and second things. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Beautiful C. S. Lewis Quotes
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. ~ C. S. Lewis.
No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. ~ C. S. Lewis.
“Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. ~ C. S. Lewis.
It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. ~ C. S. Lewis.
Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny. ~ C. S. Lewis.
The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can’t supply is proof that Heaven must be our home. ~ C. S. Lewis.
You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God. ~ C. S. Lewis.
When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. ~ C. S. Lewis.
So these were the 189 top C. S. Lewis quotes and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Bryant McGill quotes and Bruce Springsteen quotes.
