Clive Staples Lewis: Trending quotes

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Clive Staples Lewis: 544 quotes11 likes

“The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 5, "Sexual Morality"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.”

Clive Staples Lewis

As quoted in C.S. Lewis (1963), by Roger Lancelyn Green, p. 9

“All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“I hope, said the third, that your wanderings in lonely places do not mean that you have any of the romantic virus still in your blood. His name was Mr. Humanist.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 90
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (1943)

“Their own strength has betrayed them. They have…pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads.”

Clive Staples Lewis book That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 13 : They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads

“"No, no no," she said. "You don't understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … where you couldn't see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Psyche
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

“Who are you? Nobody. Who is Porridge? THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON THERE IS.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

“You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred—like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 2, "The Three-personal God"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Perelandra

Perelandra (1943)

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Not found in Lewis&#x27;s works. <br class="br">&quot;Integrity means doing the right thing at all times, without hesitation&quot; is found in a 1943 syndicated newspaper column. Elsie Robinson, &quot;Listen, World!&quot; https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/58360960/, Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), 1943-02-24, p. 10. <br class="br">&quot;Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is there to judge&quot; is found (unattributed) in the 1965 Journal of Clinical Psychology https://books.google.com/books?id=9rm1AAAAIAAJ&amp;dq=%22integrity%22+%22doing+the+right+thing%22&amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;q=%22doing+the+right+thing%22. <br class="br">The quote became attributed to C.S. Lewis by 2012 https://books.google.com/books?id=XH-1TURLaf4C&amp;pg=PT154&amp;dq=integrity+%22even+when%22+%22c+s+lewis%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi6x9XznoTKAhUKymMKHdoKCKoQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&amp;q=integrity%20%22even%20when%22%20%22c%20s%20lewis%22&amp;f=false. <br class="br">Misattributed

“Wisdom: The first error is that of the southern people, and it consists in holding that these eastern and western places are real places. … give no quarter to that thought, whether it threatens you with fear, or tempts you with hopes. For this is Superstition and all who believe it will come in the end to the swamps to the south and the jungles to the far south. Part of the same error is to think that the Landlord is a real man:”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 117
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"Miracles" (1942), p. 29
God in the Dock (1970)

“Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 52
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“Frantic administration of panaceas to the world is certainly discouraged by the reflection that "this present" might be "the world's last night"; sober work for the future, within the limits of ordinary morality and prudence, is not.”

Clive Staples Lewis

The World's Last Night (1952)

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932) — in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) (1979), p. 439

“Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies — those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Letter XXI
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
Misattributed

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant—but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.”

Clive Staples Lewis

"Bulverism" (1941)