“The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary; and after one's original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better; just as in an illness 'feeling better' is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results. A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world taking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal sufferring, "No future bliss can make up for it" not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind legs off a donkey.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.”
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C.S. Lewis
“[S]omething inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it anymore. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time."
"Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion.
"Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“Materialism is in fact no protection. Those who seek it in that hope (they are not a negligible class) will be disappointed. The thing you fear is impossible. Well and good. Can you therefore cease to fear it? Not here and now. And what then? If you must see ghosts, it is better not to disbelieve in them.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“All right, beautiful. You've got me tied down to this stone table, and there's a knife in your hand that says you get to rule Narnia for another hundred years. So maybe I die, and winter goes on. Maybe the hunger and the darkness and the fear never end. But as long as the children believe in me, I know that Aslan will live again. I, the Great Lion, Son of The Emperor Over The Sea, will live again and -- aaaaauugh!!”
―
C.S. Lewis
