Screwtape Letters Quotes

• 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

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• You will say these are very small sins... [But] it does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Light, Doe

  The Screwtape Letters ch. 12 (1941)

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• Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Church, Next

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Paved with Good Intentions: A Demon’s Road Map to Your Soul”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Amusing

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition”, p.39, Harper Collins

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• There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Thinking, Focus

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

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• 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)

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• As long as he doesn't convert it into action, it does not matter how much a man thinks about his repentance.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Thinking, Long

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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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• And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another.

  C. S. Lewis

  Cutting, Errors, Race

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Paved with Good Intentions: A Demon’s Road Map to Your Soul”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

  C. S. Lewis

  Enemy, Looks, Letters

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

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• Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Men, World

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

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• Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

  C. S. Lewis

  Courage, Army, Bravery

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

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• Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground…He [God] made the pleasure: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He [God] has forbidden.

  C. S. Lewis

  Healthy, Enemy, Degrees

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• He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hands, Vices, Want

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition”, p.36, Harper Collins

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• The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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

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• When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Self, Giving

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• The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Fire, Games

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• All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary

  C. S. Lewis

  Pretending, Turns, Mortals

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

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• Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Religion, Trying, Succeed

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

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• A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sex, Selfish, Mean

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• Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

  C. S. Lewis

  Merciful

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• 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

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• [M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Philosophy, Thinking

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• The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.

  C. S. Lewis

  Caring, Men, Two

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

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• You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption 'My time is my own'. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

  C. S. Lewis

  Religious, Feelings, Doubt

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