100+ Best C.S. Lewis Quotes That Inspire, Challenge & Transform

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

“You cannot know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.”

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

“Bravery is the most important of all the virtues because without it, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

“It is to the credit of suffering that we have such great souls among us.”

“Relying on God isn’t good for God’s glory. But it is the only safety for us.”

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good.”

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.”

“The greatest reward for doing, is to get the chance to do more.”

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable.”

“You can’t love a person who doesn’t exist.”

“The sweetest things in life are not those which are seen and touched, but those which are felt in the heart.”

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

“Lovers are always lovers because they see something in one another that no one else can see.”

“No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”

“When we meet another person, we must treat them not as they are, but as they could become.”

“Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

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

“Suffering is not the enemy; indifference is.”

“Sometimes pain is the only way to reach the truth.”

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”

“The reality of suffering demands a response.”

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.”

“God allows us to experience sorrow so that we might understand compassion.”

“The heart of man is not reached through information, but through suffering.”

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

“Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions.”

“If there is no answer to suffering, then perhaps the answer is Christ Himself.”

“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.”

“Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”

“Christianity is not a doctrine, but a story.”

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation.”

“I have come to believe that the whole world is a single poem.”

“Reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

“I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.'”

“Theology is the science of God and of the relations between God and man.”

“Your faith is safe when it rides with God in the storm, not when it demands calm seas.”

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

“The longing for a country we've never seen—that is the mark of the true child of God.”

“What we call 'the beginning' is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

“I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure.”

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“We are far too easily pleased.”

“Joy is the echo of heaven in the human heart.”

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

“We are not merely imperfect creatures who need improvement; we are rebels who need reconciliation.”

“The doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

“Reason is the natural organ of truth; imagination is the organ of meaning.”

“You can't get a pint into a quart bottle.”

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”

“The heart never speaks, but it always listens.”

“You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

“The law of human nature refers to something over and above the individual instincts.”

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.”

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?”

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original.”

“The surest sign of being mastered by pride is when we are surprised at someone else's pride.”

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

“Every time you make a choice, you turn yourself into somebody a little different from who you were before.”

“Hell is a state of mind—ye can’t take it with ye.”

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime'... but in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then—have it your way.'”

“We are told that Christ was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.”

“The fall of man began when he claimed to be his own master.”

“Temptation is not sin; yielding to temptation is.”

“The process of being civilized is always painful.”

“What you call a penitent state of mind—the sort of thing that leads up to confession—is largely mere regret for having placed yourself in a ridiculous or dangerous position.”

“We poison ourselves with our sins.”

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

“Eternity is not endless time, but something outside of time altogether.”

“The present is the point at which time touches eternity.”

“If we let God have His way, He will make us perfect—presently.”

“It is fatal to look down on the past; for unless corrected, the past will look down on the future.”

“The command 'Be perfect' is not idealistic pedantry. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. It is a command to become a child of God.”

“Time itself will end, but eternity is already here.”

“We are not like stones, but like living trees—constantly growing, changing, becoming.”

“The New Year stands before us, like a chapter in a book waiting to be written.”

“There is no use trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature.”

“We are on the razor’s edge of Eternity.”

“The future is not fixed; it is shaped by our choices today.”

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.”

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”

“The essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride.”

“Pride is the chief cause of misery.”

“The moment we admit that we are proud, we cease to be so.”

“A humble man knows he is not worthy, but values the gift he has been given.”

“True humility is not self-degradation, but self-forgetfulness.”

“Those who are proud have no need of God, except as a tool to inflate their ego.”

“The proudest man in the world is still dependent on others for his self-image.”

“Humility is the mother of all virtues.”

“The full grown man does not want toys; he wants the real thing.”

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

“One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.”

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right path.”

“The best way to destroy the appetite for sugar is to eat too much of it.”

“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

“The very name of education is progress.”

“Learning does not consist only of knowing what we must do, but also of knowing what we must avoid.”

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

“The student is not a container to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

“We read to know that we are not alone.”