C. S. Lewis Quotes About Literature

• I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

  C. S. Lewis

  God, Atheist, Literature

  "Unseen CS Lewis letter defines his notion of joy" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. December 9, 2014.

• Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Truth, Creativity

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.12, Harper Collins
• 

  Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Education, Clever, Live Life

• Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

  C. S. Lewis

  Peace, War, Government

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Eye, Dark

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, New Beginnings, Exception To The Rule

• Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Kindness, Generosity

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Wisdom, Thinking

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

• A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

  C. S. Lewis

  Atheist, Reading, Men

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

• Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

  C. S. Lewis

  Life, Grief, Sadness

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

• The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

  C. S. Lewis

  Thought Provoking, Religion, Literature

  The Screwtape Letters ch. 12 (1941)

• The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Writing, Doe

• Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  God, Thinking, Demise

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.33, Faber & Faber

• Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

  C. S. Lewis

  Order, Imagination, Literature

• In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Different, Literature

• The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Adversity, Years, Weather

• Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

  C. S. Lewis

  Time, Animal, Eternal Love

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.150, Simon and Schuster

• It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Prayer, Literature

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

  C. S. Lewis

  Respect, Book, Healing

• An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

  C. S. Lewis

  Literature, Causes, Reason

• But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reading, Eye, Night

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “An Experiment in Criticism”, p.141, Cambridge University Press

• Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Long, Together

• Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Doe, Add

• Of course all children's literature is not fantastic, so all fantastic books need not be children's books. It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Book, Writing

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A work of (whatever) art can be either 'received' or 'used'. ...'Using' is inferior to 'reception' because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it ... When the art in question is literature a complication arises, for to 'receive' significant words is always, in one sense, to 'use' them, to go through and beyond them to an imagined something which is not itself verbal.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Poetry, Doe

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