“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. 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.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say. ”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman". Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude for her five minutes after fruition.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”
―
C.S. Lewis
“You can never be really sure of how much you believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death to you.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”
―
C.S. Lewis
