C. S. Lewis Quotes About Giving

• The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving Up, Real, New Beginnings

• God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Happiness, Religious

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

• I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Giving, Safe

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.144, Simon and Schuster
• 

  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Inspirational, Broken Heart

• Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Animal, Broken

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  C. S. Lewis

  Friendship, Best Friend, Relationship

• There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.

  C. S. Lewis

  Beautiful, Wise, Stupid

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963”, p.119, Harper Collins

• I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Pain, Block

• Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.'

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving, Want, Christ

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.179, Simon and Schuster

• God, in the end, gives people what they most want, including freedom from himself. What could be more fair?

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, People, Giving

• Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Giving, People

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.117, HarperCollins UK

• 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.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Giving, Forever

• ‎"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior

  C. S. Lewis

  Selfish, Humble, Conceited

• 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

• You must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give.

  C. S. Lewis

  Omnipotence, Giving, Capacity

• To the glistening Eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy, the Valiant. To the great Western Wood, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant Southern sun, Queen Susan, the Gentle; and to the clear Northern sky I give you King Peter, the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen. May your wisdom grace us 'til the stars rain down from the heavens.

  C. S. Lewis

  Kings, Stars, Queens

  "Fictional character: Aslan". "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", 2005.

• God loves us NOT because we're lovable, because He is love. Not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give.

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving, Needs, Delight

• A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

  C. S. Lewis

  Motivational, Strong, Lying

• God gives His gifts where He finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving, Empty, Enough

• I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Luxury, Giving

• Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Giving, Needs

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I gave up Christianity at about 14. Came back to it when getting on for 30. Not an emotional conversion; almost purely philosophical. I didn't want to. I'm not in the least a religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master; but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in.

  C. S. Lewis

  Religious, Philosophical, Emotional

• For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.

  C. S. Lewis

  Self, Giving, Creation

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Men, Giving

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.109, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Giving Up, Taken

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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