Clive Staples Lewis quotes

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples 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.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“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.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“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.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

“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.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

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

— Clive Staples Lewis

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”

— Clive Staples Lewis