2,254 Quotes by C. S. Lewis

Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.

For Narnia and for Aslan!

If you find that the reader of popular romances--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry.

That fierce imprisonment in the self is but the obverse of the self-giving which is absolute reality.

Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.

Beloved," said the Glorious One, "unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.

That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.

Humility is self-forgetfulness.