C. S. Lewis Quotes About Goodness

• Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.

  C. S. Lewis

  Country, Thinking, Mirrors

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works”, p.17, Harper Collins

• 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

• 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

• You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, 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. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

  C. S. Lewis

  Kindness, Giving, Feelings

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

• God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fun, Thinking, People

  "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis, Book I, Chapter 5, ("We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"), 1952.

• An 'impersonal God'-well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads-better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap-best of all. But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, King, husband-that is quite another matter.

  C. S. Lewis

  Kings, Husband, Hunters

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works”, p.10, Harper Collins

• 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

• God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.

  C. S. Lewis

  Goodness, Divine

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.99, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• ... 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

• I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

  C. S. Lewis

  Happiness, Thinking, Awkward

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.7, Faber & Faber

• The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.

  C. S. Lewis

  Taste, Moments, Goodness

  "Selected Literary Essays".

• I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.

  C. S. Lewis

  Happiness, Mean, Men

• Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Hate, Thinking

• Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think...of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Law, Two

• God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Children, Real

• Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fun, Thinking, People

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.83, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Perfect, Debate

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Goodness is, so to speak, itself; badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

  C. S. Lewis

  Firsts, Speak, Spoiled

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

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