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Wisdom Quotes by C. S. Lewis

40 Wisdom quotes by C. S. Lewis

All Wisdom quotes C. S. Lewis’s page

Poetry is a little incarnation that gives shape to the invisible, Lewis writes. He says love forgives mistakes but still strives to remove them, and he points out that seeing something as lovely or detestable changes how we truly understand it. The quotes explore how art, love, and perception turn ideas into real experience.

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Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

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The absent are easily refuted.

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I will not be at the mercy of the telephone!

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Art can teach without at all ceasing to be art.

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Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.

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Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease?

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Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

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A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

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If one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business.

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Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.

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If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows...then we must starve eternally.

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Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased.

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Other than heaven, the only place where one's heart is completely safe from the dangers of love is hell.

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You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the univerise in general just as you find out more…

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Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and…

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For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied…

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If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it…

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It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper…

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If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise…

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Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to…

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Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from…

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To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour,…

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Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent…

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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…

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In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should…

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If these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and…

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Wisdom: The first error is that of the southern people, and it consists in holding that these eastern and western places are…

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Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and…

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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is…

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“If there is a wasp in the room, I’d like to be able to see it.”

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

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If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.

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Love, while always forgiving of imperfections and mistakes, can never cease to will their removal.

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Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.

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Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ʿreligionʾ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better...

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No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

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Reasoning is never, like poetry, judged from the outside at all.

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We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain kind.

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Regarding the debate about faith and works: It's like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important.

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Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or…

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More by C. S. Lewis

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see…

Either Jesus is the Son of God ; or a madman or worse. But His being just a great teacher? He's not left that…

To every soul, God will look like its first love because He IS its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be…

Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified…

“Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As”

“When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man…

All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job...And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone…

If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity.

The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.

I#pray because the need flows out of me all the time-walking and sleeping. It does not change # God - it changes me.

Are the gods not just?' 'Oh no, child. What would become us us if they were?

Love is more than an emotion, it is a decision.

Ink is the great cure for all human ills.

A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders…

War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has…