Born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1898, C.S. Lewis is perhaps one of the most esteemed and beloved authors of all time. His acclaimed classics range from to the theologically-specific .
Much of Lewis’s childhood and adult life were riddled with strife. After being discharged from the British Army post-World War I, Lewis began publishing under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. More than 10 years later, he finally released a book, The Pilgrim’s Regress, under his own name.
As one of the world’s most respected authors, Lewis’s words of wisdom continue to inspire countless readers and listeners. Here are our favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis about friendship, love, life, and faith.
Quotes About Love
Over the course of his career, C.S. Lewis penned a number of writings focused on love. One of his most famous works is , published in July 1960, just four months before the tragic death of his wife. Soon after, he wrote , in which he continued to explore his emotions through the lens of her passing. Here are some of Lewis’s moving and inspiring words about love that will warm your heart.
1. “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.” — C.S. Lewis,
2. “This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted." — C.S. Lewis,
3. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” — C.S. Lewis,
4. “When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”— C.S. Lewis,
5. “No people find each other more absurd than lovers.”— C.S. Lewis,
6. “Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.”— C.S. Lewis,
7. “It is indeed only love that makes the difference: all those very same principles which are evil in the world of selfishness and necessity are good in the world of love and understanding.”— C.S. Lewis,
8. “Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.” — C.S. Lewis,
9. “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”— C.S. Lewis,
10. “If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.”— C.S. Lewis,
Quotes About Faith
C.S. Lewis grew up in a religious household that followed the Church of Ireland but became an atheist during his teenage years. He eventually came back to Christianity while teaching at Oxford University, in part due to influence from his close friend and fellow author, J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis went on to pen some of the most impactful writings on Christianity of the 20th century. Here are some of Lewis’s most enlightening words on Christianity and faith.
11. “He 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,
12. “People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature… Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”— C.S. Lewis,
13. “What can you ever really know of other people's souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.”— C.S. Lewis,
14. “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” — C.S. Lewis,
15. “We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him." — C.S. Lewis,
16. “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.”— C.S. Lewis,
17. “In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.”— C.S. Lewis,
18. “The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.” — C.S. Lewis,
19. “At the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”— C.S. Lewis,
20. “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.”— C.S. Lewis,
21. “For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”— C.S. Lewis,
22. “But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”— C.S. Lewis,
23. “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”― C.S. Lewis,
Quotes About Bravery
Having lived through both World Wars, Lewis was no stranger to uncertainty and fear. During his adult years, he served in active duty through World War I and worked as a BBC broadcaster during World War II. It’s clear that Lewis’s life experiences tremendously impacted his writings. Here are some of his top quotes about bravery that we think will help you feel a little more courageous.
24. “Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do.”— C.S. Lewis,
25. “Do not dare not to dare.”— C.S. Lewis,
26. “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.”— C.S. Lewis,
27. “Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight. At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more. When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”— C.S. Lewis,
28. “Courage, dear heart.”— C.S. Lewis,
29. “‘I have come,’ said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him.”— C.S. Lewis,
30. “A man who has been in another world does not come back unchanged.”— C.S. Lewis,
31. “I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.” — C.S. Lewis,
Quotes About Life
C. S. Lewis’s breadth of writing styles and genres led him to pen some of the most inspiring quotes about life. Here are some of our favorites.
32. “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”— C.S. Lewis,
33. “The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value.” ― C.S. Lewis,
34. “The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths―but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.” — C.S. Lewis,
35. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”— C.S. Lewis,
36. “What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?”— C.S. Lewis,
37. “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”— C.S. Lewis,
38. “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” — C.S. Lewis,
39. “Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”— C.S. Lewis,
40. “To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep.”— C.S. Lewis,
41. “For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” — C.S. Lewis,
42. “The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.”― C.S. Lewis,
43. “Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means.” — C.S. Lewis,
44. “All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary.”— C.S. Lewis,
45. “Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” — C.S. Lewis,
46. “Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.”— C.S. Lewis,
47. “It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.”— C.S. Lewis,
48. “We find ourselves in a world of transporting pleasures, ravishing beauties, and tantalising possibilities, but all constantly being destroyed, all coming to nothing. Nature has all the air of a good thing spoiled.”— C.S. Lewis,
49. “Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”― C.S. Lewis,
50. “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”— C.S. Lewis,
51. “I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don’t.”— C.S. Lewis,
52. “Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” — C.S. Lewis,
53. “There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.”― C.S. Lewis,
54. “When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”― C.S. Lewis,
55. “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”― C.S. Lewis,
56. “Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.”― C.S. Lewis,
Quotes About Friendship
C.S. Lewis spent his years as a professor at Oxford University with some of his closest friends. From his writings, it is clear how much he values friendship. We picked some of our favorite quotes about friendship that highlight the emphasis Lewis placed on his interpersonal relationships.
57. “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,
58. “Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet.”— C.S. Lewis,
59. “True Friendship is the least jealous of loves.” — C.S. Lewis,
60. “The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.”— C.S. Lewis,
61. “The mark of perfect 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,
62. “We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.”— C.S. Lewis,
63. “Friendship... is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself.'”— C.S. Lewis,
64. “You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.” — C.S. Lewis,
65. “Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something, together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not.”― C.S. Lewis,
Inspirational Quotes
Whether from the perspective of Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia or through the lens of faith in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis built life lessons into his stories. Here are some of our favorite wise and inspirational sayings from this celebrated writer.
66. “We all have our different languages; but we all really mean the same thing.”― C.S. Lewis,
67. “No man who says, 'I'm as good as you,' believes it. He would not say it if he did.”— C.S. Lewis,
68. “The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that's new to him.”— C.S. Lewis,
69. “When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.” — C.S. Lewis,
70. “We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge—the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.”— C.S. Lewis,
71. “Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.” — C.S. Lewis,
72. “Things always work according to their nature.”― C.S. Lewis,
73. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”― C.S. Lewis,
74. “To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.”― C.S. Lewis,
75. “If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance.”― C.S. Lewis,
76. “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”— C.S. Lewis,
77. “It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.”― C.S. Lewis,
78. “I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace.”— C.S. Lewis,
79. “No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”― C.S. Lewis,
80. “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.”— C.S. Lewis,
81. “No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.”— C.S. Lewis,
82. “No one is told any story but their own.”― C.S. Lewis,
83. “One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”― C.S. Lewis,
84. “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,
85. "Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."— C.S. Lewis,
86. “All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.”— C.S. Lewis,
87. “For what you see and what you hear depends a good deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”― C.S. Lewis,
88. “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”— C.S. Lewis,
89. “No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.”― C.S. Lewis,
Famous Quotes About Narnia
As a child, Lewis’s favorite author was Beatrix Potter, who remains beloved by children worldwide for The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Once grown up, he followed in Potter’s footsteps and went on to pen The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the most famous and successful fantasy series of the 20th century. Here are some of our favorite quotes about Narnia that remind us to appreciate the wonder of childhood—and the magic of writing.
90. “'This is the land of Narnia,' said the Faun, 'where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.'”— C.S. Lewis,
91. “'Welcome, Prince,' said Aslan. 'Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?' 'I - I don’t think I do, Sir,' said Caspian. 'I am only a kid.' 'Good,' said Aslan. 'If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been proof that you were not.'”— C.S. Lewis,
92. “This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited; I mean, in Narnia—in our world they usually don't talk at all.”— C.S. Lewis,
93. “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve... And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”— C.S. Lewis,
94. “'Aslan,' said Lucy, 'you're bigger.' 'That is because you are older, little one,' answered he. 'Not because you are?' 'I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.'”— C.S. Lewis,
95. “I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.”— C.S. Lewis,
96. “But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs...The signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.”— C.S. Lewis,
97. “'I am,' said Aslan. 'But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.'” — C.S. Lewis,
98. “Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen.” — C.S. Lewis,
99. “All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”— C.S. Lewis,