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C. S. Lewis citations
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Clive Staples Lewis, plus connu sous le nom de C. S. Lewis, né à Belfast le 29 novembre 1898 et mort à Oxford le 22 novembre 1963, est un écrivain et universitaire britannique. Il est connu pour ses travaux sur la littérature médiévale, ses ouvrages de critique littéraire et d'apologétique du christianisme, ainsi que pour la série des Chroniques de Narnia parues entre 1950 et 1957.

Ami très proche de J. R. R. Tolkien, l'auteur du Seigneur des anneaux, il enseigne à ses côtés à la faculté de littérature anglaise de l'université d'Oxford ; ils faisaient tous deux partie du cercle littéraire des Inklings. Partiellement en raison de l'influence de Tolkien et de la lecture de G. K. Chesterton, Lewis s'est reconverti au christianisme, devenant, selon ses propres termes, « un très ordinaire laïc de l'Église d'Angleterre » ; cette reconversion a eu de profondes conséquences sur son œuvre. Il a acquis une grande popularité par les chroniques radiophoniques sur le christianisme qu'il a données au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et obtenu un énorme succès avec ses livres de fantasy pour enfants.

Les œuvres de C. S. Lewis ont été traduites en plus de 40 langues et le recueil des Chroniques de Narnia s'est vendu à plus de 120 millions d'exemplaires dans le monde et continue à se vendre au rythme de plus d'un million d'exemplaires par an. Le Monde de Narnia a également été adapté à plusieurs reprises au théâtre et au cinéma. Wikipedia  

✵ 29. novembre 1898 – 22. novembre 1963   •   Autres noms C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis photo
C. S. Lewis: 273   citations 0   J'aime

C. S. Lewis Citations

“Je suis un païen converti vivant au milieu de puritains apostats.”

C. S. Lewis

en
Surpris par la joie (Surprised by Joy, 1955)

C. S. Lewis: Citations en anglais

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

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Clive Staples Lewis

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

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

“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:”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre 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.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre 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?”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre 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.”

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Clive Staples Lewis

The World's Last Night (1952)

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

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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!”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Screwtape Letters

Letter XXI
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

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

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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.”

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Clive Staples Lewis

"Bulverism" (1941)

“They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 7 : The Pendragon, section 2

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (1943)

“The standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our minds and it is against that standard that we must test all contemporary thought. In fact, we must at all costs not move with the times.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre God in the Dock

"Christian Apologetics" (1945), p. 92
God in the Dock (1970)

“Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. It does involve the belief that God loves man and for his sake became man and died.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Miracles

Source: Miracles (1947), Ch. 7: "A Chapter of Red Herrings"

“It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed — not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of the Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Great Divorce

I cried. 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.'
Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 14

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

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Clive Staples Lewis

Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity, where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend.
Misattributed
Variante: You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.”

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Clive Staples Lewis

The World's Last Night (1952)

“When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Screwtape Letters

Letter XIV
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

“The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson: 'Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

“Courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years into domestic hatred.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Screwtape Letters

Letter XXVI
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 4, "Morality and Psychoanalysis"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 9, "Counting the Cost"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

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Clive Staples Lewis

"Is Theology Poetry?" (1945)

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

“It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 6, "Christian Marriage"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“I am sorry that my convictions do not allow me to repeat my friend’s offer, said one of the others. But I have had to abandon the humanitarian and egalitarian fancies. His name was Mr. Neo-Classical.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 89
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 5

“Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist…”

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Clive Staples Lewis livre The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain (1940)
Variante: "Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist."

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

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Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), Ch. 1
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)

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