“Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it” Source: The Case for Christianity

"Pain plants the flag of truth within a rebel fortress” Source: The Problem of Pain

“We actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact” Source: The Problem of Pain

“All conversion involves death and re-birth; but sometimes the one, sometimes the other, of these elements is more noticeably present to the consciousness of the patient” Source: Williams and the Arthuriad

“Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed” Source: The Case for Christianity

“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy” Source: The Abolition of Man

“As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’” Source: The Abolition of Man

“The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” Source: The Abolition of Man

“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to …” 1/2

“You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping” Source: Mere Christianity

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food … If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world …” 1/2

"I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently” Source: The Abolition of Man

"The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are” Source: ‘Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?" in Selected Literary Essays

“If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple” Source: Mere Christianity

“For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John” Source: The Problem of Pain

"A rejection, or in Scripture's strong language, a crucifixion of the natural self is the passport to everlasting life. Nothing that has not died will be resurrected” Source: ‘Membership,’ The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

“There (in the Psalms) ... I find an experience fully God-centered, asking of God no gift more urgently than His presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the highest degree, and unmistakably real” Source: Reflections on the Psalms

“A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed” Source: Mere Christianity

“There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake” Source: Mere Christianity

"No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice” Source: The Magician's Nephew

“You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house” Source: Mere Christianity

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer” Source: A Grief Observed

“Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test …” 1/2

"All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings” Source: Letters of C.S. Lewis (November 5, 1959)

“Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others” Source: God in the Dock

"There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve their existence. The other is to believe and feel an unhealthy interest in them” Source: The Screwtape Letters

*Christians believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else … In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing not even just one person—but …” 1/2

“We are not always aware of things at the time they happen” Source: God in the Dock

“Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that God loves man and for his sake became man and died” Source: Miracles

"Sometimes fairy stories may say best what's to be said” Source: New York Times (November 18, 1956)

"It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out” Source: The Screwtape Letters

“He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves,' but also 'as wise as serpents.' Christ wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head” Source: Mere Christianity

"The Lion was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout” Source: The Magician's Nephew

“We don’t think rationally for very long at a time—it’s too tiring” Source: God in the Dock

“We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort” Source: Mere Christianity

“Men look on the starry heavens with reverence: monkeys do not” Source: God in the Dock

“There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace by better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false images of myself” Source: Lewis wrote to Joy Davidman Gresham in an autographed copy of his book, The Great Divorce

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God” Source: Mere Christianity

“We treat God as the police treat a man when he is arrested; whatever He does will be used in evidence against Him” Source: God in the Dock

“Nothing is wonderful except the abnormal and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm” Source: Miracles

“The better you know that two and two make four, the better you know that two and three don’t” Source: Miracles

“Men of sensibility look up on the night sky with awe: brutal and stupid men do not” Source: Miracles

"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” Source: Paper given to the Oxford Socratic Club, entitled, ‘Is Theology Poetry?’

“If you think you are a poached egg, when you are looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you” Source: God in the Dock

“In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world” Queen Lucy in ‘The Last Battle’

“Joy is the serious business of heaven” Source: Letters to Malcolm

"What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring” Source: The Pilgrim's Regress

"I do not maintain that God's creation of Nature can be proved as rigorously as God's existence, but it seems to me overwhelmingly probable, so probable that no one who approached the question with an open mind would very seriously entertain any other hypothesis” Source: Miracles

“We really don’t know much about loving until we’re in touch with love Himself” Source: The Anvil (BBC Radio Broadcast aired 7/22/1943)

"Our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan” Source: Christian Reflections