2,254 Quotes by C. S. Lewis

I seemed to hear God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk.

The people who keep asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about; if they did they would know that 'a decent life' is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for.

I gave up Christianity at about 14. Came back to it when getting on for 30. Not an emotional conversion; almost purely philosophical. I didn't want to. I'm not in the least a religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master; but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in.

There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.

We must get over wanting to be needed-this is the hardest of all temptations to resist

Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do.

Monarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. ... Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: ... For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. (And) There is no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Righ and Wrong are...

I will not be at the mercy of the telephone!