Quotes By C. S. Lewis

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

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.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

We are what we believe we are.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.