70 C.S. Lewis Quotes About Life, Love, and Faith

1. “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.”

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

3. “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.”

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

5. “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.”

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

7. “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...”

8. "Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties."

9. "Don't shine so that others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see HIM."

10. "Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything."

11. "Joy is the serious business of Heaven."

12. “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

13. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

14. “It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”

15. "Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others."

16. "God doesn't want something from us. He simply wants us."

1. "A woman’s heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her."

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

3. "Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."

4. "If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it."

5. “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.”

6. "You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God."

7. "Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last."

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

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

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

11. "There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give."

1. “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.”

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

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

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

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

6. “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.”

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.”

9. "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."

10. “Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”

1. “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.”

2. “Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”

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

4. “I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”

5. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

6. “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.”

7. "When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind."

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

9. "Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny."

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

11. “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.”

12. "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."

13. "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."

14. "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."

15. “Things never happen the same way twice.”

1. "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

2. "Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither."

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

4. “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.”

5. "Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

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

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

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

9. "Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."

10. "Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning."

11. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

12. “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”

13. “When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”

14. “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”

15. “Adventures are never fun while you're having them.”

16. "Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose."

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

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