C. S. Lewis Quotes

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

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

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Writing is like a ‘lust,’ or like ‘scratching when you itch.’ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

I don’t pray so that I can change God. I pray so that God can change me.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Solemnity is proper in church, but things that are proper in church are not necessarily proper outside, and vice versa. For example, I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.

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.’

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

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

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.