C. S. Lewis Quotes About Evil

• Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Increase, Interest

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.171, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks

  C. S. Lewis

  Gun, Men, Evil

• Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

  C. S. Lewis

  Loss, Evil, Decision

  "The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics".

• You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Inspiration, Evil

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Weight of Glory”, p.31, Harper Collins

• I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Thinking, People

• The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility...According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Teacher, Inspiration

• If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Giving, Joy

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.

  C. S. Lewis

  Girl, Song, Sight

• Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Joy, Free Will

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Political, Worship

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Allegory of Love”, p.234, Cambridge University Press

• When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Godly, Men

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

  C. S. Lewis

  Cutting, Men, Voice

• We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fighting, Evil, Trying

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mistake, Evil, Necessary Evil

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.209, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Teacher, Pride

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

• We must beware of the Past, mustn't we? I mean that any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us. Notice in Dante that the lost souls are entirely concerned with their past! Not so the saved.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Past, Evil

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Letters to an American Lady”, p.103, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Evil, Desire

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen”, p.98, Harper Collins

• Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Dream, Religious

• The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Pain, Men

• Badness is only spoiled goodness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Spoiled, Goodness

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• ... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Thinking, Two

• Badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Catholic, Way

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.50, HarperCollins UK

• Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Mean, Fighting

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

  C. S. Lewis

  People, Evil, Arithmetic

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Evil comes from the ABUSE of free will

  C. S. Lewis

  Evil, Abuse, Free Will

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