C. S. Lewis Quotes About Joy

• No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

  C. S. Lewis

  Joy, Missing, Soul

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.142, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Joy is the serious business of heaven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Marriage, Joy

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Sex, Children

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Weight of Glory”, p.26, Harper Collins

• There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

  C. S. Lewis

  Happiness, Joy, Waste

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

  C. S. Lewis

  Self, Two, People

  "The Problem of Pain". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1940.

• With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.

  C. S. Lewis

  Happiness, Mother, Fun

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

• 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

• We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sex, Ambition, Joy

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Weight of Glory”, p.26, Harper Collins

• If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fire, Hands, Water

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

• 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 very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.

  C. S. Lewis

  Joy, Common, Nonsense

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Joy, Elements, Praise

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.30, Faber & Faber

• I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Joy, Sometimes

  C. S. Lewis (1966). “Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life”, p.180, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Religious, Self

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.141, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy? Should we not reply, With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleansed first. It may hurt, you know-even so, sir.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Heart, Son

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.222, Simon and Schuster

• Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Hands, Perfect

• Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Children, Mean

  "Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1956.

• All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.

  C. S. Lewis

  Joy, Desire, Pilgrim

• When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Thinking, Years

• And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.

  C. S. Lewis

  Loneliness, Envy, Hatred

• Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.

  C. S. Lewis

  Joy, Able, Misery

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.141, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The action of Pity leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Religious, Healing

• Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day." (Epitaph for Joy Gresham)

  C. S. Lewis

  Easter, Stars, Clothes

  Clive Staples Lewis, “Here The Whole World”

• In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Joy, Doe

• When we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Happiness, Joy

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

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