Poetry Quotes by C.S. Lewis

16 Poetry quotes by C.S. Lewis

Lewis treats poetry as a bridge between myth and truth. These 16 quotations reveal his playful yet earnest approach to the art form.

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“I am so coarse, the things the poets see Are obstinately invisible to me”

C.S. Lewis

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“Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?”

C.S. Lewis

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“I must say my prayers today whether I feel devout or not; but that is only as I must learn my grammar…

C.S. Lewis

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“Nowhere in Chaucer do we find what can be called a radically allegorical poem.”

C.S. Lewis

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“I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be forbid him to…

C.S. Lewis

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“It was likely, then that this—-this stumbling walk on a wet night across a ploughed field-—meant death. Death—-the thing one had always…

C.S. Lewis

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“When the poets call the directions or 'rulings' of Jahweh 'true' they are expressing the assurance that these, and not those others,…

C.S. Lewis

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“But the detail of the poem shows power akin to genius, and reveals to us that much neglected law of literary history…

C.S. Lewis

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“It is (according to one’s point of view) either a wonderful piece of luck or a wise provision of God’s, that poetry…

C.S. Lewis

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“Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the…

C.S. Lewis

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“There seem, in fact, to be only two views we can hold about awe. Either it is a mere twist in the…

C.S. Lewis

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“Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes though stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet…

C.S. Lewis

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“Nearly all our older poetry was written and read by men to whom the distinction between poetry and rhetoric, in its modern…

C.S. Lewis

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“Light itself was your first love: you paint only as a means of telling about light... Ink and catgut and paint were…

C.S. Lewis

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“The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not…

C.S. Lewis

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“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we…

C.S. Lewis

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“At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected…

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“Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other?”

C.S. Lewis

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“All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.…

C.S. Lewis

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“the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very…

C.S. Lewis

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“If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are…

C.S. Lewis

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“The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church -…

C.S. Lewis

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“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman". Strictly speaking, a…

C.S. Lewis

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“Después de cada fracaso, pedid perdón, levantaos del suelo y volved a intentarlo. Muy a menudo, lo que Dios nos otorga primero no es…

C.S. Lewis

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“Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could…

C.S. Lewis

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“Because 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

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“Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well…

C.S. Lewis

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“When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are…

C.S. Lewis

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“He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the…

C.S. Lewis

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“If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in…

C.S. Lewis

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“Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the…

C.S. Lewis

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