C.S. Lewis
British writer and scholar of the early-to-mid 20th century, best known for his Christian apologetics and fantasy literature. His most famous works include *The Chronicles of Narnia*, a series of allegorical fantasy novels, and *Mere Christianity*, a collection of essays exploring faith. His prose blends intellectual rigor with imaginative storytelling.
“What lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy.”
“They were making a riotous noise, but it was much more like music - rather advanced music which you don't quite take in at the first hearing - than birds' songs ever are in our world.”
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'My tooth is aching' than to say 'My heart is broken'. Yet if the cause is accepted and faced, the conflict will strengthen and purify the character and in time the pain will usually pass. Sometimes, however, it persists and the effect is devastating; if the cause is not faced or not recognised, it produces the dreary state of the chronic neurotic. But some by heroism overcome even chronic mental pain. They often produce brilliant work and strengthen, harden, and sharpen their characters till they become like tempered steel.”
“You can make anything by writing.”
“Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.”
“(Of the main character seeing a new world for the first time.) The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river.”
“To me, re-reading my favorite books is like spending time with my best friends.I’d never be satisfied to limit myself to just one experience each with my favorite people.”
“But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word INTERFERENCE. But Christianity placed at the centre what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer. If its picture were true then no sort of 'treaty with reality' could ever be possible. There was no region even in the innermost depth of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice No Admittance. And that was what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.”
“But for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.' The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others...At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. it is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.”
“Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.”
“The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.”
“Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.”
“Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.”
“Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”
“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
“The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.”
“She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
“Don't think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited.”
“Authority, reason, experience; on these three, mixed in varying proportions all our knowledge depends.”
“For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.”