Some C. S. Lewis Quotes

"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."

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

"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."


On friendship

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

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


On literature

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

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."

"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."


On Christianity

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

"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."

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

"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."