Looking for CS Lewis quotes to inspire and motivate you?
Born on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland, Clive Staples Lewis popularly known as CS Lewis was a professor at Oxford University and also became a renowned Christian writer and apologist, using logic and philosophy to support the principles of your faith. He is also known throughout the world as the author of the fantasy series “The Chronicles of Narnia”, which has been adapted into several films.
Lewis was a prolific fiction and non-fiction author who wrote dozens of books throughout his career. His faith-based arguments as seen in texts like “The Great Divorce” and “The Miracles” are held in high esteem by many theologians, scholars, and general readers. His satirical fiction novel “Letters from the Devil to His Nephew” is also a classic.
Lewis also continued his love affair with classical mythology and storytelling during his later years: his book “While We Have No Faces” told the story of Psyche and Cupid. He also wrote an autobiography “Captivated by Joy”. He died on November 22, 1963 in Headington, Oxford.
I’ve put together a collection of the best CS Lewis quotes on friendship, faith, humility, and many other topics. Enjoy them!
Table of Contents
50 CS Lewis quotes on friendship, faith and humility
Here are the best CS Lewis quotes:
1. “Love is not affective feelings, but the strong desire for the good of the loved person as far as possible.”
2. “Don’t waste time wondering if you “love” your neighbor; he acts like you do. As soon as we do this, we discover one of the great secrets. When you behave as if you love someone, you will soon come to love them.”
3. “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of any solid and lasting happiness in our lives.”
4. “True humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking less of yourself”
5. “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: How? You too? I thought he was the only one.”
6. “ Friendship is unnecessary, just like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that puts value on survival.”
7. “What attracts people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”
8. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.”
9. “My argument against God was that the universe seemed very cruel and unfair. But how did I get that idea of fair and unfair? A man cannot draw a crooked line unless he has no idea of a straight line. What was he comparing this universe to when he called it unfair?”
10. “Because the present is the point where time coincides with eternity.”
11. “We don’t really want to have a father in heaven, but rather a grandfather , a senile benevolence who enjoys seeing the young, as the old say, ‘having a great time’; a being whose plan for the universe was simply to be able to truly say at the end of each day: ‘everyone had a good time’.”
12. “I believe in Christianity just as I believe the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because thanks to seeing it I can see everything else.”
13. “The Christian does not believe that God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us.”
14. “Although our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”
15. “Malevolent words can hurt your feelings, but silence breaks your heart.”
16. “God allows us to experience the low points of life to teach us lessons that we could not learn otherwise.”
17. “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
18. “If you love deeply, you will be seriously hurt. But still, it’s worth it.”
19. “You can never have a big enough cup of tea or read a long enough book for my liking.”
20. “Man can neither make nor retain an instant of time; all the time is a pure gift.”
21. “It is not simply fatigue as such that produces irritation, but unexpected demands on an already tired man.”
22. “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
23. “I am inclined to consider, almost as a canon, that if a children’s story is only enjoyed by children it is a bad children’s story.”
24. “If I find in myself desires that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was created for another world.”
25. “Everyone gets what they want in life. But not everyone is happy afterwards.”
26. “Sometimes it’s good to lose everything so you realize what you really need.”
27. “Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
28. “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and only reading it once.”
29. “The worst enemy of love is indifference, not hate.”
30. “Do not attack those who are weaker than you. To those who are stronger, do as you wish.”
31. “Being a Christian means forgiving the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
32. “In the soul, as in the soil, it is not the most beautiful flowers that take the deepest roots.”
33. “A man cannot diminish the glory of God by refusing to worship him, any more than a lunatic can extinguish the sun by writing the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
34. “Of all the vices, only cowardice is purely painful: horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; leisure has its pleasures.”
35. “There are much better things ahead than anything we leave behind.”
36. “God cannot give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
37. “We will not consider any experience that we may have to be miraculous, whatever it may be, if we previously maintain a philosophy that excludes the supernatural.”
38. “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe is meaningless, we would never have discovered that it is meaningless.”
39. “It is a good rule of thumb after reading a new book, never to allow yourself to read a new one until you have read an old one in between.”
40. “ Pain insists on being taken care of. God whispers to us in our pleasures, he speaks to us in our conscience, but he cries out in our pain; pain is his megaphone to wake up a deaf world.”
41. “Always try to use language in such a way that it is clear what you mean and that what you say cannot be interpreted in another way.”
42. “What you see and hear depends on what kind of person you are and from what point you are looking.”
43. “You can do anything when writing.”
44. “When you are afraid, the best thing is to face the danger and feel something warm and safe behind.”
45. “He did not die for men, but for every man. If every man had been the only man created, he would have done no less.”
46. “To defeat evil in the world we must first overcome it in ourselves.”
47. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death for you.”
48. “The future is something that everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes per hour, whatever they do and whoever they are.”
49. “Let us pray that the human race never leaves the earth to spread its innocuousness throughout the rest of the universe.”
50. “There is still hope, when we face an unsolved problem without prejudice. However, there is no hope if we act as if the problem does not exist.”
Which CS Lewis quote was your favorite? You can leave your comment below.