C. S. Lewis Quotes & Sayings

“Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."”

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”

“Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.”

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”

“You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

“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.”

“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. To love is to be vulnerable.”

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

“It's funny how, day by day, nothing ever changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”

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

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally, and often far more, worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

“Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back, everything is different?”

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

“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.”

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”