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Portrait of C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

(1898–1963) Writer

1190 quotes in 3489 categories

C. S. Lewis writes about God as a personal first love and the Church as a helpful ally. He says true moral teachers do not invent new rules, and that learning Christianity is like studying chemistry. His prayers, he notes, change the person who prays, and he points to many witnesses of the Resurrection.

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C. S. Lewis was a writer.

Quick Facts About C. S. Lewis

Born: November 29, 1898
Died: November 22, 1963
Profession: Writer

About C. S. Lewis

His full name was Clive Staples Lewis. He taught English literature at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1925 to 1954 and at Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1954 to 1963. In addition to his academic work, he wrote many popular books, most famously the seven‑book Chronicles of Narnia series.

Quotes by C. S. Lewis

Joy is the serious business of heaven.

Business

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There seems no plan because it is all plan.

Funny

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I will not be at the mercy of the telephone!

Compassion

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Human intellect is incurably abstract.

Abstract

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Total war is the most humane in the long run.

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Anger is the fluid love bleeds when cut.

Anger

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It's always winter but it's never Christmas.

Christmas

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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Death

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The present is the only time in which any duty may be done or grace received.

Daily bread

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Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world.

Being a mother

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Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into a glory

Agony

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Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.

Age

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[Something] does not rise to the dignity of error.

Dignity

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Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.

Devil

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Pain plants the flag of truth within a rebel fortress.

Flags

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Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

Delightful

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If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to…

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What can be better than to get out a book on Saturday afternoon and thrust all mundane considerations away till next week.

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I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside of their special subject.

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We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage.

Audience

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It is in their 'good' characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self- revelations.

Character

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The human mind is generally far more eager to praise or dispraise than it is to describe and define.

Human mind

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Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by…

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We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

Ambition

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The command "Be ye prfect" is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He said (in the…

Bible

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Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth;…

Appreciative

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Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for "down here" is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment's rest…

Business

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If I had really cared as I thought I did about the sorrows of the world I should not have been so…

Bears

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Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now…

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If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial…

Bereavement

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Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you…

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The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good - anyway, to do…

Animal

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Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half…

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...we sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it…

Animal

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The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as…

Absolutes

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“But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart.…

Every moment

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better…

Approval

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Chronological snobbery is the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone…

Acceptance

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God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want…

Allies

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I am a product of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of…

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C. S. Lewis by topic

Inspirational (207) Men (166) Love (158) Religion (106) World (97) Thinking (92) People (86) Life (80) Time (78) Christian (77) Christianity (72) God (67) Christ (53) Giving (51)