C.S. Lewis Quotes

“You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to.”

“And that's why, gentleman, if your little girl doesn't come up to scratch, it will be our painful duty to cut all your throats. Merely in a way of business, as you might say, and no offense, I hope.”

“Nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.”

“A sensible human once said, "If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit"; and again, "She's the sort of woman who lives for others you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.”

“Virtue - even attempted virtue - brings light; indulgence brings fog.”

“We have lost the invaluable faculty of being shocked a faculty which has hitherto almost distinguished the Man or Woman from the beast or child.”

“We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism--the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good.”

“The Intelligentsia (scientists apart) are losing all touch with, and all influence over, nearly the whole human race. Our most esteemed poets and critics are read by our most esteemed critics and poets (who don't usually like them much) and nobody else takes any notice. An increasing number of highly literate people simply ignore what the 'Highbrows' are doing. It says nothing to them. The Highbrows in return ignore and insult them.”

“Sometimes fairy stories may say best what's to be said.”

“If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit.”

“The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.”

“And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.”

“For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.”

“You'll never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking what sort of impression you make.”

“If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them.”

“And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.”

“Human intellect is incurably abstract.”

“The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary color in the spectrum.”

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

“Please,' she said, 'You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd rather be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”

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

“And the Prince stared at her like a man out of his wits.”

“if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”

“Lucy looked and saw that Aslan had just breathed on the feet of the stone giant. It's all right!" shouted Aslan joyously. "Once The feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow.”

“You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.”