50 Surprising C.S. Lewis Quotes You Didn't Know

1. “The place for which He designs them in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over.” — The Problem of Pain

2. “For it is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) “having to depend on God” is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things.” — Letters to an American Lady

3. “A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”  — The Four Loves

4. “To be God – to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response – to be miserable – these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food the universe grows – the only food that any possible universe can ever grow – then we must starve eternally.” — The Problem of Pain

5. “But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.” — Mere Christianity

6. “The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.” — Surprised by Joy

7. “… if it shall please God that I write more books, blessed be He. If it shall please him not, blessed be He.” — The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis

8. “You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.” The Great Divorce

9. “If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, ‘I am.’ To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.” — Surprised by Joy

10. “If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.” — The Problem of Pain 

Further Reading: Who Were the Inklings Besides C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien?

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11. “When Christ died, he died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only person in the world.” — Mere Christianity

12. “I couldn’t believe that ninety-nine religions were completely false and the remaining one true. In reality, Christianity is primarily the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfilment of what was vaguely hinted in all the religions at their best. What was vaguely seen in them all comes into focus in Christianity – just as God himself comes into focus by becoming a man.” — The Grand Miracle

13. “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen - not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” — Mere Christianity

14. “Christianity really does two things about conditions here and now in this world: (1) It tries to make them as good as possibly, i.e., to reform them; but also (2) It fortifies you against them so far as they remain bad.” — God in the Dock

15. “All people, whether Christian or not, must be prepared to live a life of discomfort. It is impossible to accept Christianity for the sake of finding comfort: but the Christian tries to lay himself open to the will of God, to do what God wants him to do.” — God in the Dock

16. “I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms… When you have reached your own room be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.” — Mere Christianity

17. “Of course we have been taught what to do with suffering—offer it in Christ to God as our little, little share of Christ’s suffering—but it is so hard to do.” — Letters to An American Lady

18. “ ... Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” — Mere Christianity

19. “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” — The Weight of Glory

20. “The Christian doctrine that there is no ‘salvation’ by works done according to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts.” — Present Concerns 

Further Reading: 25 Inspiring C.S. Lewis Quotes that Shaped My Faith

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21. “These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear things about ourselves and the universe we live in.” — Mere Christianity

22. “It is the law of the natural universe that no being can exist on its own resources. Everyone, everything is hopelessly indebted to everyone and everything else.” — The Grand Miracle

23. “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” — Mere Christianity

24. “. . . no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” – a character in The Great Divorce

25. “For change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into big oak: if it became a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change.” — The Grand Miracle

26. “You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mold are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice. But you must be prepared for the unpleasant things and the discomforts.” — God in the Dock

27. “Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator . . . We are not merely imperfect creators who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms.” — The Problem of Pain  

28. “. . . the only thing one can usually change in one’s situation is oneself. And yet one can’t change that either—only ask Our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with one’ s sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of life.” —  Letters to an American Lady  

29. “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.” — Mere Christianity

30. “Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’ s, and this one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it.” — The Problem of Pain

Further Reading: 5 Books by C.S. Lewis that Everyone Should Read

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31. “We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. This must be clearly distinguished from the whole of what any one us may think about God and man… When we mention our personal opinions we must always make quite clear the difference between them and the faith itself.” — The Grand Miracle

32. “We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our faith is not likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us.” — The Grand Miracle

33. “I have come to the conclusion that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning. A passage from some theological work for translation into the vernacular ought to be a compulsory paper in every ordination examination.” — The Grand Miracle

34. “When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of a translator – one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand.” — God in the Dock

35. “It is absolutely disgraceful that we expect missionaries to the Bantus to learn Bantu but never ask whether our missionaries to the Americans or English can speak American or English. Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t write your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it or you don’t believe it.” — God in the Dock

Further Reading: The Enduring Legacy of C.S. Lewis

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36. “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.” — A Grief Observed

37. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” — The Problem of Pain

38. “We are told that even those tribulations which fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ’s sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way.” — Letters to an American Lady

39. “. . . the possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet.” — The Problem of Pain

40. “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. ” — A Grief Observed

Further Reading: 5 C.S. Lewis Quotes to Encourage You in Life's Great Adventures

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41. “Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague word. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.” — Letter to Joan Lancaster (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume 3)

42. “Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.” — Letter to Arthur Greeves (Collected Letters Volume 1)

43. “Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.” — Letter to Thomasine (Collected Letters Volume 3) 

44. “The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right, the readers will most certainly go into it.” — God in the Dock

45. “No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.” — The Weight of Glory

Further Reading: C.S. Lewis: Chronicles of an Apologist

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46. “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” — God in the Dock

47. “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” — On Stories

48. “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty. . .” — Of Other Worlds

49. “I now enjoy Tolstoy and Jane Austen and Trollope as well as fairy tales and I call that growth: if I had to lose the fairy tales in order to acquire the novelists, I would not say that I had grown but only that I had changed. A tree grows because it adds rings: a train doesn’t grow by leaving one station behind and puffing on to the next.” — On Stories

50. “I’m not quite sure what you meant by ‘silly adventure stories without any point.’ If they are silly, then having a point won’t save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a  ‘point’ you mean some truth about the real world which one can take out of the story, I’m not sure that I agree. At least, I think that looking for a ‘point’ in that sense may prevent one from getting the real effect of the story in itself—like listening too hard for the words in singing which isn’t meant to be listened to that way (like an anthem in a chorus).” —  Letter to Phyllida (Collected Letters Volume 3)

Further Reading: Why Should You Read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy?

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