100 Top & Most Popular C S Lewis Quotes

About C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, renowned for his works on Christian apologetics and the beloved “Chronicles of Narnia” series, offers profound wisdom through his quotes on various topics. Here are 100 of his top and most popular quotes, categorized by themes.

100 Top Quotes by C.S. Lewis in English

Here are 100 top and popular quotes by C.S. Lewis, organized by various topics:

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Love

C.S. Lewis’s reflections on love are deep and insightful, capturing its essence and significance in human life.

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” – C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” – C.S. Lewis

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.” – C.S. Lewis

“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.” – C.S. Lewis

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis

“The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.” – C.S. Lewis

“We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.” – C.S. Lewis

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” – C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis

“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Faith

C.S. Lewis’s writings on faith provide clarity and encouragement, guiding believers in their spiritual journey.

“Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” – C.S. Lewis

“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

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.” – C.S. Lewis

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” – C.S. Lewis

“Miracles 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.” – C.S. Lewis

“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time—waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God—it changes me.” – C.S. Lewis

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” – C.S. Lewis

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” – C.S. Lewis

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Life

Lewis’s observations on life reflect his profound understanding of the human condition and the quest for meaning.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” – C.S. Lewis

“Courage, dear heart.” – C.S. Lewis

“We are what we believe we are.” – C.S. Lewis

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” – C.S. Lewis

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C.S. Lewis

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Friendship

Lewis’s quotes on friendship highlight the deep and enduring connections that form between true friends.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” – C.S. Lewis

“Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?” – C.S. Lewis

“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” – C.S. Lewis

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” – C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis

“In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.'” – C.S. Lewis

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.” – C.S. Lewis

“The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.” – C.S. Lewis

“We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts.” – C.S. Lewis

“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Suffering

Lewis’s insights into suffering offer comfort and understanding for those enduring pain and hardship.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.” – C.S. Lewis

“The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.” – C.S. Lewis

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.'” – C.S. Lewis

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” – C.S. Lewis

“We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour.” – C.S. Lewis

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” – C.S. Lewis

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Imagination

Lewis’s creative genius is evident in his celebration of imagination and its power.

“Imagination is the organ of meaning.” – C.S. Lewis

“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis

“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” – C.S. Lewis

“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

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” – C.S. Lewis

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.” – C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” – C.S. Lewis

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C.S. Lewis

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.” – C.S. Lewis

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Humility

Lewis’s thoughts on humility reflect his belief in self-awareness and the importance of modesty.

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” – C.S. Lewis

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the centre—wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race.” – C.S. Lewis

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” – C.S. Lewis

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” – C.S. Lewis

“The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.” – C.S. Lewis

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” – C.S. Lewis

“The greatest cause of human suffering is human pride.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Christianity

Lewis’s insights into Christianity offer profound reflections on faith and its implications for life.

“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

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” – C.S. Lewis

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” – C.S. Lewis

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” – C.S. Lewis

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” – C.S. Lewis

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” – C.S. Lewis

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” – C.S. Lewis

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” – C.S. Lewis

“The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” – C.S. Lewis

“When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Writing

As a prolific author, Lewis’s thoughts on writing offer guidance and inspiration for aspiring writers.

“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C.S. Lewis

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.” – C.S. Lewis

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” – C.S. Lewis

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” – C.S. Lewis

“Writing is like a ‘lust,’ or like ‘scratching when you itch.’ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I for one must get it out.” – C.S. Lewis

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” – C.S. Lewis

“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis

“The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose.” – C.S. Lewis

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Wisdom

Lewis’s reflections on wisdom provide timeless insights into understanding and navigating life.

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – C.S. Lewis

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S. Lewis

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

“We are what we believe we are.” – C.S. Lewis

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” – C.S. Lewis

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” – C.S. Lewis

“We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” – C.S. Lewis

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.” – C.S. Lewis

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.” – C.S. Lewis

Conclusion

C.S. Lewis’s quotes continue to inspire and guide people across the globe. His wisdom spans topics like love, faith, life, friendship, suffering, imagination, humility, Christianity, writing, and wisdom, offering timeless insights and encouragement.

FAQs:

What is C.S. Lewis best known for?

C.S. Lewis is best known for his “Chronicles of Narnia” series and his works on Christian apologetics, including “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters.”

What did C.S. Lewis believe about Christianity?

Lewis believed in the truth of Christianity and its ability to provide meaning and purpose to life. He often wrote about his faith and the rational basis for believing in Christianity.

How did C.S. Lewis view the role of imagination?

Lewis viewed imagination as crucial for understanding deeper truths and enhancing reality. He believed it was an essential part of human experience.

What are some of C.S. Lewis’s famous works?

Some of Lewis’s famous works include “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” and “The Great Divorce.”

What was C.S. Lewis’s approach to writing?

Lewis believed that writing was a powerful tool for communication and imagination. He emphasized clarity, creativity, and the importance of storytelling in conveying profound truths.