“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

—  Clive Staples Lewis , book The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 11

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him." by Clive Staples Lewis?
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

Related quotes

William James photo

“Tell him to live by yes and no — yes to everything good, no to everything bad.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

As quoted in The Thought and Character of William James (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. II, ch. 91
1890s

Edmund Burke photo

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Edmund Burke book Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Volume i, p. 526; see #Disputed below.
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
Source: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents: Volume 1 Paperback: 001

John Piper photo

“We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: The Passion of Jesus Christ

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Do not make an enemy of anyone until you know what there is between him and God! If he is good, God will not leave him to you and if he is bad, then your knowing of his badness will make you safe from him and so you do not need to make him your enemy.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

Tacitus photo

“Indeed, when a ruler once becomes unpopular, all his acts, be they good or bad, tell against him.”

Tacitus book Histories

Book I, 7
Histories (100-110)

Henry Sidgwick photo

“Each person is morally obliged to regard the good of anyone else as much as his own good, except when he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 3, chapter 13, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't — no matter when, no matter what.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 31 (p. 293)
Context: Here it was again, the most ancient of roadforks, one that Paul had glimpsed before, in Kroner's study, months ago. The choice of one course or the other had nothing to do with machines, hierarchies, economics, love, age. It was a purely internal matter. Every child older than six knew the fork, and knew what the good guys did here, and what the bad guys did here. The fork was a familiar one in folk tales the world over, and the good guys and the bad guys, whether in chaps, breechclouts, serapes, leopardskins, or banker's gray pinstripes, all separated here.
Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't — no matter when, no matter what.

“When I look back on my life and consider all the way I have been led, above all I thank God to Whom I owe everything, for all His goodness to me and ascribe to Him all the praise and honour.”

William Henry Perkin

As quoted in The chemist and druggist https://archive.org/stream/b19974760M1453#page/222/mode/2up (1906), UBM. p. 222.

“Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts…”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Guardian Galenor in Ch 43 : various pursuits<!-- 418 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: People allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts…

Related topics