C.S. Lewis quote: "Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object."

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, ...
C.S. LEWIS

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't mer...
C.S. LEWIS

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.
C.S. LEWIS

The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, ...
C.S. LEWIS

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are
C.S. LEWIS

The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some d...
C.S. LEWIS

I have said that she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of ...
C.S. LEWIS

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this ide...
C.S. LEWIS

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest bette...
C.S. LEWIS

We turn first ter the bleedin' parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Guvn...
C.S. LEWIS

... the very last thing I want to do is to unsettle in the mind of any Christian, whatever his denom...
C.S. LEWIS

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should...
C.S. LEWIS

It is hard to have patience with people who say There is no death or Death doesn't matter. There is ...
C.S. LEWIS

What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.
C.S. LEWIS

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to...
C.S. LEWIS

You can make anything by writing.
C.S. LEWIS

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep sile...
C.S. LEWIS

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have re...
C.S. LEWIS

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found...
C.S. LEWIS

God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.
C.S. LEWIS

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you st...
C.S. LEWIS

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as i...
C.S. LEWIS

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. LEWIS

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – wo...
C.S. LEWIS

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can u...
C.S. LEWIS

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
C.S. LEWIS

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
C.S. LEWIS

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slight...
C.S. LEWIS

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C.S. LEWIS

Nos acercaremos a Dios no con el intento de evitar los sufrimientos inherentes a todos los amores, s...
C.S. LEWIS

Hence as the poet says: People in love cannot be moved by kindness, And opposition makes them feel l...
C.S. LEWIS

Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It i...
C.S. LEWIS

The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the s...
C.S. LEWIS

Emerson has said, "When half-gods go, the gods arrive." That is a very doubtful maxim. Better say, "...
C.S. LEWIS

For most of us the true rivalry lies between the self and the human Other, not yet between the human...
C.S. LEWIS

But for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has bee...
C.S. LEWIS

I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, "But, sir, aren'...
C.S. LEWIS

Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as "Careful! This might l...
C.S. LEWIS

The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even re...
C.S. LEWIS

You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as...
C.S. LEWIS

Just as there are none good but God, and nothing good but goodness, so there are no loves but love i...
C.S. LEWIS

What I have called Appreciative love is no basic element in Affection. It usually needs absence or b...
C.S. LEWIS

Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for ...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o...
C.S. LEWIS

Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like café complet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, g...
C.S. LEWIS

The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the s...
C.S. LEWIS

La amistad nace en el momento en el que una persona le dice a la otra: ¿Qué? ¿Tú también ? Pens...
C.S. LEWIS

If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christen...
C.S. LEWIS

A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot val...
C.S. LEWIS

Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that...
C.S. LEWIS

Eros, honoured without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon.
C.S. LEWIS

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w...
C.S. LEWIS

Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brute...
C.S. LEWIS

Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that...
C.S. LEWIS

If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having b...
C.S. LEWIS

He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is th...
C.S. LEWIS

If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to le...
C.S. LEWIS

And as all Christians know there is another way of giving to God; every stranger whom we feed or clo...
C.S. LEWIS

Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-decept...
C.S. LEWIS

Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a miser...
C.S. LEWIS

Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice te...
C.S. LEWIS

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre...
C.S. LEWIS

To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life...
C.S. LEWIS

In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endur...
C.S. LEWIS

Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved.
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school ...
C.S. LEWIS

Liking and Loves for the Sub-Human

“Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love ...
C.S. LEWIS

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ...
C.S. LEWIS

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physi...
C.S. LEWIS

El amor empieza a ser un demonio desde el momento en que comienza a ser un dios.
C.S. LEWIS

Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines ...
C.S. LEWIS

We were made for God. Only by being in some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His b...
C.S. LEWIS

Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experien...
C.S. LEWIS

A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one...
C.S. LEWIS

What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but ...
C.S. LEWIS

Amar é, sempre, ser vulnerável. Para que nunca se sofra com isso, aconselha-se não se amar algo, ...
C.S. LEWIS

Nothing in Man is either worse or better for being shared with the beasts.
C.S. LEWIS

Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need...
C.S. LEWIS

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping ...
C.S. LEWIS

When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has ...
C.S. LEWIS

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fru...
C.S. LEWIS

Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
C.S. LEWIS

While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwh...
C.S. LEWIS

Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.
C.S. LEWIS

It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious fr...
C.S. LEWIS

We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be
naturally loved.
C.S. LEWIS

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w...
C.S. LEWIS

We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o...
C.S. LEWIS

Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public ...
C.S. LEWIS

But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies ha...
C.S. LEWIS

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself ...
C.S. LEWIS

Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for Go...
C.S. LEWIS

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
C.S. LEWIS

For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes ...
C.S. LEWIS

Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration ...
C.S. LEWIS

In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which ...
C.S. LEWIS

The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT ...
C.S. LEWIS

We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become ...
C.S. LEWIS

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre...
C.S. LEWIS

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for m...
C.S. LEWIS

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. ...
C.S. LEWIS

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense i...
C.S. LEWIS

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted crea...
C.S. LEWIS

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you wan...
C.S. LEWIS

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but becaus...
C.S. LEWIS

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love ...
C.S. LEWIS

We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sa...
C.S. LEWIS

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be ...
C.S. LEWIS

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll h...
C.S. LEWIS

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as...
C.S. LEWIS

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make ev...
C.S. LEWIS

The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where th...
C.S. LEWIS

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ...
C.S. LEWIS

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden ...
C.S. LEWIS

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those t...
C.S. LEWIS

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...
C.S. LEWIS

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know ...
C.S. LEWIS

I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looki...
C.S. LEWIS

Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
C.S. LEWIS

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civil...
C.S. LEWIS

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea...
C.S. LEWIS

At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or ...
C.S. LEWIS

As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may thin...
C.S. LEWIS

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our nat...
C.S. LEWIS

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
C.S. LEWIS

In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
C.S. LEWIS

Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the s...
C.S. LEWIS

Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist...
C.S. LEWIS

People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.
C.S. LEWIS

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of ...
C.S. LEWIS

The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but t...
C.S. LEWIS

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no sh...
C.S. LEWIS

He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no...
C.S. LEWIS

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ...
C.S. LEWIS

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun...
C.S. LEWIS

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the b...
C.S. LEWIS

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
C.S. LEWIS

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good be...
C.S. LEWIS

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explana...
C.S. LEWIS

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y...
C.S. LEWIS

You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.
C.S. LEWIS

When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, ...
C.S. LEWIS

In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates o...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one ...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no ...
C.S. LEWIS

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C.S. LEWIS

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
C.S. LEWIS

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up o...
C.S. LEWIS

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he...
C.S. LEWIS

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking d...
C.S. LEWIS

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you.
Since but one voice is heard, i...
C.S. LEWIS

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,...
C.S. LEWIS

Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is ...
C.S. LEWIS

The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I wa...
C.S. LEWIS

Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, ...
C.S. LEWIS

Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to av...
C.S. LEWIS

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris-
ing generation. I am an oldster myself and...
C.S. LEWIS

Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike t...
C.S. LEWIS

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
C.S. LEWIS

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, am...
C.S. LEWIS

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
C.S. LEWIS

Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon hi...
C.S. LEWIS

I desired dragons with a profound desire.
C.S. LEWIS

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on wh...
C.S. LEWIS

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole w...
C.S. LEWIS

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of...
C.S. LEWIS

But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do ...
C.S. LEWIS

You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect th...
C.S. LEWIS

Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Ind...
C.S. LEWIS

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot ...
C.S. LEWIS

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
C.S. LEWIS

We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shov...
C.S. LEWIS

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but becaus...
C.S. LEWIS

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A y...
C.S. LEWIS

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies t...
C.S. LEWIS

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
C.S. LEWIS

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give...
C.S. LEWIS

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he...
C.S. LEWIS

You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own m...
C.S. LEWIS

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that...
C.S. LEWIS

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explan...
C.S. LEWIS

All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are...
C.S. LEWIS

A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from thos...
C.S. LEWIS

Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.
C.S. LEWIS

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong tu...
C.S. LEWIS

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precis...
C.S. LEWIS

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead ...
C.S. LEWIS

Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither.
C.S. LEWIS

â€œIf we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we ...
C.S. LEWIS

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possib...
C.S. LEWIS

If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of t...
C.S. LEWIS

Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, b...
C.S. LEWIS

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The gre...
C.S. LEWIS

The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epic...
C.S. LEWIS

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense ...
C.S. LEWIS

The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small pric...
C.S. LEWIS

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walk...
C.S. LEWIS

C.S. Lewis

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