C. S. Lewis Quotes - Page 16

• Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Mean, Fighting

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Care, Speak

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

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• We were made not primarily that we may love God, but that God may love us.

  C. S. Lewis

  May, God Love, Made

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor-that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender-this movement full speed astern-is repentance.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sorry, Men, Track

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• What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, People, Religion

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• It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.

  C. S. Lewis

  Moments, That Moment, Rejects

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.162, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving Up, Soul, Puppets

  "The Abolition of Man". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1943.

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• What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Prayer, Mean

  "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1963.

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• If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love - You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Love You, Men

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• Joy bursts in our lives when we go about doing the good at hand and not trying to manipulate things and times to achieve joy.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hands, Joy, Trying

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• If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Thinking, Ambitious

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Knowing, People, Mind

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• Much is expected from those to whom much is given.

  C. S. Lewis

  Given, Philanthropy Giving, Expected

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.309, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Selfishness has never been admired.

  C. S. Lewis

  Selfishness

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Mere Christianity”, p.17, HarperCollins UK

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• Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of lucifer.... An instrument strung, but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Pride, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

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• Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational Life, Taken, Men

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• Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others.

  C. S. Lewis

  Grumbling, Complaining, Blame

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• The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing than worshipping ... 'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god.

  C. S. Lewis

  Military, War, Thinking

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• God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Mean, Player

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Self, Long

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Religious, God Love

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Thinking, People

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• Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Lying, Made, Knows

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Prayer, People

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• Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.

  C. S. Lewis

  Lost Love, Love Is, Hatred

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