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C. S. Lewis Quotes (1898-1963)
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About C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was an Irish author, scholar of medieval literature, and Christian apologist. He is best known for his essays on Christianity and for the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.
Best C. S. Lewis Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful C. S. Lewis quotes.
“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.”
“Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.”
“"Everything" is a subject on which there is not much to be said.”
“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.”
“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
C. S. Lewis Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of C. S. Lewis quotes by topic.
C. S. Lewis on Christianity 3 quotes
“We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.”
C. S. Lewis on Moment 2 quotes
“The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.”
C. S. Lewis on Second Coming 2 quotes
“The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.”
C. S. Lewis on Goodness 2 quotes
“Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger — according to the way you react to it.”
C. S. Lewis on Books 2 quotes
“Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.”
C. S. Lewis on Science fiction 2 quotes
“It is absurd to condemn them [science fiction stories] because they do not often display any deep or sensitive characterization. They oughtn't to. … Every good writer knows that the more unusual the scenes and events of his story are, the slighter, more ordinary, the more typical his persons should be. Hence Gulliver is a commonplace little man and Alice is a commonplace little girl. If they had been more remarkable they would have wrecked their books. The Ancient Mariner himself is a very ordinary man. To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much; he who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange.”
C. S. Lewis on Omnipotence 2 quotes
“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can.'... It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of his creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because his power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
C. S. Lewis on Honor
C. S. Lewis on Press
C. S. Lewis on First love
C. S. Lewis on Heaven
C. S. Lewis on Certainty
“We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.”
What C. S. Lewis Said About Others
Discover personal opinions C. S. Lewis shared regarding contemporaries.
C. S. Lewis on The Faerie Queene 5 quotes
View all 5 quotes on The Faerie Queene →C. S. Lewis on J. R. R. Tolkien 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on J. R. R. Tolkien →C. S. Lewis on Percy Bysshe Shelley 2 quotes
“Dante is eminently the poet of beatitude. He has not only no rival, but none second to him. But if we were asked to name the poet who most nearly deserved this inaccessible proxime accessit, I should name Shelley. Indeed, my claim for Shelley might be represented by the proposition that Shelley and Milton are, each, the half of Dante.”
C. S. Lewis on William Morris 2 quotes
“My great author at this period was William Morris...I found The Well at the World's End. I looked—I read chapter headings—I dipped—and next day I was off into town to buy a copy of my own. Like so many new steps it appeared to be partly a revival- 'Knights in Armour' returning from a very early period of my childhood. After that I read all the Morris I could get, Jason, The Earthly Paradise, the prose romances. The growth of the new delight is marked by my sudden realisation, almost with a sense of disloyalty, that the letters WILLIAM MORRIS were coming to have at least as potent a magic in them as WAGNER.”
C. S. Lewis on Walter Savage Landor
“We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.”
C. S. Lewis on David Lyndsay
“He usually lacks the originality of Henryson and the brilliance of Dunbar and Douglas. But what there is of him is good all through.”
C. S. Lewis on Chrétien de Troyes
C. S. Lewis on Thomas Traherne
“At present I'm re-reading Traherne's Centuries of Meditations which I think almost the most beautiful book (in prose, I mean, excluding poets) in English.”
C. S. Lewis on Michel de Montaigne
“Mr. Sensible learned only catchwords from them. He could talk like Epicurus of spare diet, but he was a glutton. He had from Montaigne the language of friendship, but no friend.”
C. S. Lewis on Mervyn Peake
“[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.”
Quotes About C. S. Lewis
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about C. S. Lewis from others.
Arthur C. Clarke on C. S. Lewis
“As far as I can recall, Lewis and I met only once. The encounter took place at Oxford in the well-known pub, the Eastgate. I was accompanied by my fellow Interplanetarian, Val Cleaver, and Lewis brought along a friend whose name I didn't catch. Needless to say, neither side converted the other, and we refused to abandon our diabolical schemes of interplanetary conquest. But a fine time was had by all, and when, some hours later, we emerged a little unsteadily from the Eastgate, Dr. Lewis' parting words were "I'm sure you're very wicked people—but how dull it would be if everyone was good". C. S. Lewis's friend? It was another Oxford don, one J. R. R. Tolkien, who I met again some years later [...]”
Walter Hooper on C. S. Lewis
“I once asked how he managed to write with such ease, and I think his answer tells us more about his writing than anything else he said. He told me that the thing he loved most about writing was that it did two things at once. This he illustrated by saying: "I don't know what I mean till I see what I've said."”
C. E. M. Joad on C. S. Lewis
“Mr. Lewis possesses the rare gift of being able to make righteousness readable.”
Zadie Smith on C. S. Lewis
Margaret Thatcher on C. S. Lewis
“[I]t was the religious writing of that High Anglican C.S. Lewis which had most impact upon my intellectual religious formation. The power of his broadcasts, sermons and essays came from a combination of simple language with theological depth. Who has ever portrayed more wittily and convincingly the way in which Evil works on our human weaknesses than he did in The Screwtape Letters? Who has ever made more accessible the profound concepts of Natural Law than he did in The Abolition of Man and in the opening passages of Mere Christianity? I remember most clearly the impact on me of Christian Behaviour (republished in Mere Christianity, but originally appearing as radio talks). This went to the heart of the appalling disparity between the way in which we Christians behave and the ideals we profess.”
J. R. R. Tolkien on C. S. Lewis 3 quotes
“As C. S. Lewis said to me long ago, more or less – (I do not suppose my memory of his dicta is any more precisely accurate than his of mine: I often find strange things attributed to me in his works) – 'if they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious'.”
P. L. Travers on C. S. Lewis
“You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there's no such thing as creative writing. I've always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That's our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can't say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” '''What nonsense! I'm given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.”
Simon Horobin on C. S. Lewis
“As poacher turned gamekeeper, C.S. Lewis found himself having to drill students in the elements of Old English philology.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to C. S. Lewis
“The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked.”
About C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was an Irish author, scholar of medieval literature, and Christian apologist. He is best known for his essays on Christianity and for the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.