C.S. Lewis Quotes

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

“Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it.”

“Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?" Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you're there.”

“The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.”

“Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.”

“Chronological snobbery is the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively), or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.”

“No more I do, your Majesty. But what's that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here.”

“The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.”

“I would prefer to battle the 'I'm special' feeling not by the thought, 'I'm no more special than anyone else,' by by the feeling, 'Everyone is as special as me.'”

“One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.”

“A little lie is like a little pregnancy it doesn't take long before everyone knows.”

“Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”

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

“When I'm older I'll understand" said Lucy, " I am older and I don't think I want to understand", replied Edmund”

“Your people eat dry and tasteless flesh but it is off plates as smooth as ivory and as round as the sun.”

“‎"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior”

“He produced mainly three results: Hatred, Terror, Adoration.”

“The whole journey was odd and dream-like -- the roaring stream, the wet grey grass, the glimmering cliffs which they were approaching, and always the glorious, silently pacing beast ahead.”

“Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction ; they can be deceived by the stories in the women's magazines.”

“We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.”

“Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.”

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].”

“One always feel better when one has made up one's mind.”

“We must get over wanting to be needed.”

“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”