You’ve probably come across a number of C.S. Lewis quotes before, he’s one of the most quoted authors on social media!
C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis) was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University.
Lewis wrote over 30 books that were translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. He is best know for his works of fiction such as The Chronicles of Narnia, which was popularised on stage, TV, radio, and cinema.
C.S. Lewis was strongly influenced by his faith and also produced many
non-fiction Christian apologetics.
In this collection of C.S. Lewis quotes I’ve focused on putting together what I consider to be the greatest quotes by C.S. Lewis that are inspiring and thought-provoking.
77 Best C.S. Lewis Quotes
1. “We are what we believe we are.” – C.S. Lewis
2. “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” – C.S. Lewis
3. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
4. “Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.” – C.S. Lewis
5. “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…” – C.S. Lewis
6. “Forgiveness does not mean excusing.” – C.S. Lewis
7. “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” – C.S. Lewis
8. “Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.” – C.S. Lewis
9. “I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” – C.S. Lewis
10. “A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.” – C.S. Lewis
11. “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” – C.S. Lewis
12. “The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.” – C.S. Lewis
13. “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” – C.S. Lewis
14. “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
15. “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
16. “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
17. “What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.” – C.S. Lewis
18. “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
19. “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
20. “The past is frozen and no longer flows, and the present is all lit up with eternal rays.” – C.S. Lewis
21. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis
22. “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” – C.S. Lewis
23. “In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s, we do not accept them easily enough.” – C.S. Lewis
24. “When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.” – C.S. Lewis
25. “Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” – C.S. Lewis
26. “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – C.S. Lewis
27. “It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God.” – C.S. Lewis
28. “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” – C.S. Lewis
29. “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” – C.S. Lewis
30. “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
31. “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.” – C.S. Lewis
32. “God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.” – C.S. Lewis
33. “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
34. “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” – C.S. Lewis
35. “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” – C.S. Lewis
36. “We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.” – C.S. Lewis
37. “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” – C.S. Lewis
38. “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.” – C.S. Lewis
39. “An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.” – C.S. Lewis
40. “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C.S. Lewis
41. “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.” – C.S. Lewis
42. “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
43. “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
44. “With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.” – C.S. Lewis
45. “Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.” – C.S. Lewis
46. “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” – C.S. Lewis
47. “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
48. “Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.” – C.S. Lewis
49. “Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” – C.S. Lewis
50. “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
51. “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
52. “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
53. “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.” – C.S. Lewis
54. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” – C.S. Lewis
55. “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
56. “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
57. “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” – C.S. Lewis
58. “Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis
59. “Crying is all right in its own 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
60. “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.”” – C.S. Lewis
61. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – C.S. Lewis
62. “Love is unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.” – C.S. Lewis
63. “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” – C.S. Lewis
64. “You can’t know, you can only believe—or not.” – C.S. Lewis
65. “Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better.” – C.S. Lewis
66. “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” – C.S. Lewis
67. “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” – C.S. Lewis
68. “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” – C.S. Lewis
69. “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S. Lewis
70. “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
71. “Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.” – C.S. Lewis
72. “Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.” – C.S. Lewis
73. “You doubt your value. Don’t run from who you are.” – C.S. Lewis
74. “You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.” – C.S. Lewis
75. “Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, contentment, or even common sense.” – C.S. Lewis
76. “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” – C.S. Lewis
77. “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis
Did you find these C.S. Lewis Quotes inspiring?
If you liked these C.S. Lewis quotes then please share this post to help and inspire others.
