C.S. Lewis Signature Classics Quotes

“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics

“If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics

“There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics

“At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Here's a poor little kangaroo.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“We all appear as dunces when feigning an interest in things we care nothing about.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.’ ‘But”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Listen!’ said the White Spirit. ‘Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.’ ‘Ah,”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. We”
― C.S. Lewis, The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis: From Narnia to the Space Trilogy and Mere Christianity: Christian allegory, apologetics, criticism, and spiritual memoirs