Christian author (1898-1963)
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
C. S. LEWIS
The Four Loves
As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.
C. S. LEWIS
Perelandra
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
C. S. LEWIS
The Four Loves
It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.
C. S. LEWIS
letter, November 8, 1952
Let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them", this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts--that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
C. S. LEWIS
The Screwtape Letters
A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most, or else just silly.
C. S. LEWIS
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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.
C. S. LEWIS
"Is Theology Poetry?"
Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.
C. S. LEWIS
foreward, Smoke on the Mountain
Who believes in Aslan nowadays?
C. S. LEWIS
Prince Caspian
I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.
C. S. LEWIS
letter, July 17, 1953
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
C. S. LEWIS
letter, April 19, 1951
You do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.
C. S. LEWIS
That Hideous Strength
Another possible objection is this. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream?
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
Don't bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour.
C. S. LEWIS
letter to Genia Goelz, June 13, 1951
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life -- to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son -- how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".
C. S. LEWIS
"On Forgiveness", The Weight of Glory
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.
C. S. LEWIS
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe