C. S. Lewis Quotes About Culture

• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Taken, Mean

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.11, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Gnats, Civilization

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.11, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

  C. S. Lewis

  Spiritual, Culture, Moral

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.293, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• The only way to drive out bad culture is to create good culture. We need to recognize that artistic talent is a gift from the Lord - and that developing those talents is the only way to create good culture.

  C. S. Lewis

  Needs, Culture, Way

• When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence.

  C. S. Lewis

  Artist, Culture, Genius

• Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Shadow, Important

• A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from those very things which culture and religion are about. Culture as a collective name for certain very valuable activities is a permissible word; but culture hypostatized, set up on its own, made into a faith, a cause, a banner, a platform, is unendurable. For none of the activities in question cares a straw for that faith or cause. It is like a return to early Semitic religion where names themselves were regarded as powers.

  C. S. Lewis

  Expression, Names, Culture

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