166 C.S. Lewis Quotes on Life, People and God

Clive Staples Lewis – or C.S. Lewis – was best known for his children’s classics The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy books set in a world of magic and talking animals. Although most famous for The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Lewis wrote many other books about Christianity, having rediscovered the faith through his good friend, J.R.R Tolkien.

Born in Ireland (now Northern Ireland) in 1898, Lewis renounced Christianity in his early teens and became fascinated with mythology, but returned to the faith at the age of 32. Both disciplines feature heavily in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe; in fact, Aslan was said to be the bodily representation of the Son of God.

Both childhood and Christianity feature heavily in C.S Lewis’ quotes, which often speak of the joys of childhood being found again later in life. If you’re looking for a way to see the world through a child’s eyes again, read some of his quotes on life, education, and God, and grasp the wonders of those uncomplicated years once again.

Most Famous C.S. Lewis Quotes

“We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.” – C.S. Lewis

“We are what we believe we are.” – C.S. Lewis

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.” – C.S. Lewis

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you do, and you will presently come to love him.” – C.S. Lewis

“I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?” – 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

“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” – C.S. Lewis

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” – C.S. Lewis

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” – C.S. Lewis

“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

“Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” – C.S. Lewis

“All get what they want; they do not always like it.” – C.S. Lewis

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis

“A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.” – 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

“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

“I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” – 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

“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

“Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – 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

“Though our feelings come and go, his love for us does not.” – 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

“Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.” – C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” – C.S. Lewis

“Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.” – C.S. Lewis

“Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” – 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

“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

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” – C.S. Lewis

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you, said the Lion.” – 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

“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

“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” – C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable” – C.S. Lewis

“If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.” – C.S. Lewis

“How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.” – C.S. Lewis

“One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness.” – 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 door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” – C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…” – C.S. Lewis

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” – 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

“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

“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” – C.S. Lewis

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” – 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

“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” – 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

“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.” – C.S. Lewis

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.” – 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

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – C.S. Lewis

“There would be no sense in saying you trusted Jesus if you would not take his advice.” – C.S. Lewis

“No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights.” – 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

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” – 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

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” – 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

“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

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” – 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

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.” – C.S. Lewis

“Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.” – C.S. Lewis

“To walk out of his will is to walk into nowhere.” – 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

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.” – C.S. Lewis

“Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.” – C.S. Lewis

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” – C.S. Lewis

“Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.” – 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

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.” – 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

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” – C.S. Lewis

“The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life.” – 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

“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

“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.” – 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

“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

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” – C.S. Lewis

“Do not waste time bothering whether you love” – C.S. Lewis

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives” – C.S. Lewis

“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” – 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

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.” – C.S. Lewis

“Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.” – C.S. Lewis

“Forgiveness does not mean excusing.” – C.S. Lewis

“The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.” – C.S. Lewis

“You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” – 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

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” – C.S. Lewis

“With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.” – C.S. Lewis

“It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.” – C.S. Lewis

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.” – C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C.S. Lewis

“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.” – C.S. Lewis

(Read this next: 32 Good Quotes to Remember About Life)

C.S. Lewis Quotes on God and Religion

“If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” – 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

“You must ask for God’s help. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.” – C.S. Lewis

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

“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, can truly say to every group of Christian friends, Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another. The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” – C.S. Lewis

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S. Lewis

“The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred.” – 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

“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

“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

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” – C.S. Lewis

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God.” – 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

“Jesus Christ did not say, Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.” – C.S. Lewis

“We’re not doubting that God will do the best for us; we’re wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” – 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

“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?” – C.S. Lewis

“There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.” – 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

“When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.” – C.S. Lewis

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis

“You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God.” – 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

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” – C.S. Lewis

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” – C.S. Lewis

“If God forgives us we must forgive ourselves otherwise its like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him.” – C.S. Lewis

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” – C.S. Lewis

“Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair.” – C.S. Lewis

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” – C.S. Lewis

“There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, Thy will be done,” – C.S. Lewis

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” – 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

“God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.” – 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

“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

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” – 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

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.” – 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

“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

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” – C.S. Lewis

“We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.” – C.S. Lewis

“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.” – 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

“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

“God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.” – C.S. Lewis

“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ.” – 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

“All these toys were never intended to possess my heart. My true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ.” – 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

“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

“I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.” – 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

“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

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” – C.S. Lewis

More Famous Quotes from Inspiring People

411 Rumi Quotes to Celebrate Life and Bring Contentment
128 Short Inspirational Quotes for Students of All Ages
18 Deep Frida Kahlo Quotes for Self-Reflection and Strength
59 Bob Ross Quotes on Art, Nature and Making Your Today Better
33 Deep Buddha Quotes on Love, Life and Happiness