C. S. Lewis Quotes About Reality

• Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Thinking, Feet

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.34, Faber & Faber

• Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Quality, Way

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Positive, Success

• Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. Is must not become what the people call a "mutual admiration society"; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.

  C. S. Lewis

  Spiritual, Sweet, Reality

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.100, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.

  C. S. Lewis

  Grief, Blessed, Reality

• It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Mind, Done

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

• The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality of whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered to them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Reality, Two

• I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.

  C. S. Lewis

  Forgiveness, Reality, Thinking

• Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Risk, Tests

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.13, Faber & Faber

• The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Mean, Acceptance

  "The Weight of Glory". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1949.

• One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.

  C. S. Lewis

  Life, Animal, Reality

• We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Perfect, Mind

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”, p.26, 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

• Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Reality, Important

• In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Reality, Machines

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

• Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Complicated, Odd

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.48, HarperCollins UK

• Nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.

  C. S. Lewis

  Dream, Real, Should Have

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”, p.80, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

  C. S. Lewis

  Courage, Honesty, Hypocrite

  In Cyril Connolly 'The Unquiet Grave' (1944) ch. 31

• Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Mean, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Screwtape Letters”, p.4, Harper Collins

• We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations.

  C. S. Lewis

  Beautiful, Bible, Book

• Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Heaven, Great Divorce

• That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Makers, Great Divorce

  "The Great Divorce". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1945.

• For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Reality, Men

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature”, p.183, Cambridge University Press

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

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Doe, Add

• My own eyes are not enough for me...I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many is not enough...I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. More gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.

  C. S. Lewis

  Dog, Nature, Regret

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