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The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination
C. S. Lewis
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Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you'd never know which were which.
C. S. Lewis
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How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
C. S. Lewis
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The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
C. S. Lewis
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No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'
C. S. Lewis
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If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
C. S. Lewis
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It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a man's.
C. S. Lewis
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The standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.
C. S. Lewis
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Because God created the Natural - invented it out of His love and artistry - it demands our reverence.
C. S. Lewis
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The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.
C. S. Lewis
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If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.
C. S. Lewis
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Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.
C. S. Lewis
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In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.
C. S. Lewis
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Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord.' It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
C. S. Lewis
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Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
C. S. Lewis
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The promise, made when I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love.
C. S. Lewis
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He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.
C. S. Lewis
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Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.
C. S. Lewis
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I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
C. S. Lewis
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He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
C. S. Lewis
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What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you...We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.
C. S. Lewis
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To admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.
C. S. Lewis
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Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.
C. S. Lewis
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In order that we finite beings may apprehend the Emporer He translates His glory into multiple forms - into stars, woods, waters, beasts, and the bodies of men.
C. S. Lewis
