C. S. Lewis Quotes About Pleasure

• Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Depression, God, Christian

• God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Pain, Speak

• Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reading, Two, Eating

  C. S. Lewis (1966). “Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

• The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".

  C. S. Lewis

  Love Is, Men, Long

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

• Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pride, Men, Competition

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

• 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

• 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

• God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Pleasure, Pain And Pleasure

• 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

• 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

• You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.

  C. S. Lewis

  Childhood, Wish, Fairy Tale

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Letters to an American Lady”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Dream, Religious

• We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Opportunity, Men

• Is any pleasure on Earth as great as a circle of Christian friends?

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Circles, Earth

• Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they 'own' their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Energy, World

  C. S. Lewis (1995). “The Screwtape Letters”, Bantam Classics

• A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Pleasure, Remembered

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Out of the Silent Planet”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

• The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.

  C. S. Lewis

  Way, Satisfaction, Pleasure

• I never see why we should do anything unless it is either a duty or a pleasure! Life's short enough without filling up hours unnecessarily

  C. S. Lewis

  Filling Up, Hours, Enough

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963”, p.96, HarperCollins UK

• We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Stupidity, World

• Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my conversion. Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Fire, Circles

• Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.

  C. S. Lewis

  Philosophy, Mistake, Farewell

• Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Rights, Differences

• As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Doe, May

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