C. S. Lewis Quotes About Habits

• Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.

  C. S. Lewis

  Being In Love, Love Is, Feelings

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.197, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hands, Always Trying, Soul

• Love...is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Love You, Love Is

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

• I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought feeling after feeling action after action had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an harrow to the string then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead through to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontier-post across it. So many roads once now so many culs de sac.

  C. S. Lewis

  Grief, Thinking, Frustration

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.24, Faber & Faber

• The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Inability, Forget

  C.S. Lewis (2005). “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, p.16, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

• Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God.

  C. S. Lewis

  Lying, Sainthood, Action

• A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.

  C. S. Lewis

  Journey, Men, People

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.142, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.

  C. S. Lewis

  Journey, Needs, Use

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.142, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.

  C. S. Lewis

  Being In Love, Love Is, Feelings

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.97, HarperCollins UK

• The desire for bad art is the desire bred of habit: like the smoker's desire for tobacco, more marked by the extreme malaise of denial than by any very strong delight in fruition.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Strong, Desire

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