C. S. Lewis Quotes About Humility

• Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Christian

• Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Delight, Lines

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.53, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

  C. S. Lewis

  God, Wisdom, Humility

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Plato, Lying

• A man is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility.

  C. S. Lewis

  Attitude, Humility, Men

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

• Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humble, Humility, Pride

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

• Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Pride, Men

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

• Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Personality, Unity

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.139, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

• We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.

  C. S. Lewis

  Country, Humility, Giving

• Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Men, Needs

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Humility, Pride

• True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Humility, Self

• Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Humility, Perfect

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Weight of Glory”, p.38, Harper Collins

• If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Humility, Conceited

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

• If anyone would like to acquire humility, the first step is to realize one is proud. Nothing can be done before it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Done, Proud

• As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Sin Of Pride, Long

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding. If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God, but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Humility, Omnipotence

• Humility, after the first shock, is cheerful virtue.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Cheerful, Firsts

• My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sadness, Humility, Thinking

• By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.

  C. S. Lewis

  Clever, Believe, Mean

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.154, Simon and Schuster

• We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, War, Humility

• And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Pride, Vanity

• What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Believe, Humility

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