C. S. Lewis Quotes - Page 9

• ...here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.)

  C. S. Lewis

  Bullying, Cheating, Hurt

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• I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Religion, Answers

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

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• Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.

  C. S. Lewis

  Being In Love, Love Is, Feelings

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.97, HarperCollins UK

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• Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Giving, Forever

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• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Taken, Mean

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.11, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Fall, Errors

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil”, p.8, HarperCollins UK

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• The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and that this process goes on very far inside. One's most private wishes, one's point of view, are the things that have to be changed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Self, Views

  BBC Radio Talk: "Beyond Personality -- Mere Men", Broadcast 21 March 1944, BBC Home Service Radio

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• The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.

  C. S. Lewis

  Family, Friends, Careers

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  100 Copy quote

• When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Godly, Men

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You can't analyze God. He is too awesome, too big, too mysterious.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mysterious, Bigs

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• Do not dare not to dare.

  C. S. Lewis

  Life, Religion, Dare

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

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• Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of lucifer.... An instrument strung, but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Pride, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

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• Humility is self-forgetfulness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Humility, Self, Forgetfulness

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• Christ did not die for man because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because he is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Miracle, Dying

  C. S. Lewis (1996). “Miracles: A Preliminary Study”, Touchstone Books

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• Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Pain, World

  "Fictional character: C. S. "Jack" Lewis". "Shadowlands", 1993.

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• 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”

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• I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Prayer, Believe

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

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• A perfect practice of Christianity would, of course, consist in a perfect imitation of the life of Christ -- I mean, in so far as it was applicable in one's own particular circumstance. Not in an idiotic sense -- it doesn't mean that every Christian should grow a beard, or be a bachelor, or become a travelling preacher. It means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Mean, Practice

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• The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Dirty, Tests

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

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• God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.

  C. S. Lewis

  Attention, Infinite, Spares

  C. S. Lewis (1952). “Mere Christianity: a revised and enlarged edition, with a new introduction, of the three books, The case for Christianity, Christian behaviour, and Beyond personality”, Scribner Paper Fiction

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• When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Marriage, Valentines Day

  80 Copy quote

• It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wonderful, Can Do

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.92, HarperCollins UK

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• We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Mind, Alive

  "The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics".

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