Cat > Cat's Quotes

“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.”
― C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“Readers are advised to remember the devil is a liar.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you'd never know which were which.”
― C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

“Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“I desired dragons with a profound desire.”
― C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

“Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

“Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“If God 'foresaw' our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose god is outside and above the Time-line... You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He know your tomorrow's actions in just the same way--because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but the moment at which you have done it is already 'NOW' for Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
― C. S. Lewis

“Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.”
― C.S. Lewis

“One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”
― C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“In your life you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some that you wish you never have to think about again. But you do.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Aslan's instructions always work; there are no exceptions.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”
― C.S. Lewis