48 C. S. Lewis Quotes: Inspiring Words from Narnia’s Author

1. “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”

2. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

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

4. “I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”

5. “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.”

6. "Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

7. “You can make anything by writing.”

8. “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.”

1. “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.”

2. “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.”

3. “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.”

4. “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

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

6. “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.”

7. "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

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

9. "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."

10. "Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ."

1. “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.”

2. “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.”

3. “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”

4. “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”

5. "Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity."

1. "Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success."

2. "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."

3. "We are what we believe we are."

4. "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

5. "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending."

6. "Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny."

7. “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

8. “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.”

9. "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."

10. "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

11. "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

12. "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

13. "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."

14. "Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

15. "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."

16. "Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature."

17. "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."

18. "Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them."

19. "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

20. "The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks."

21. "One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts."

22. "Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come."

23. "If you never take risks, you'll never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived."

24. "Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward."

25. "The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed."