2,254 Quotes by C. S. Lewis

A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt.

A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme--whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence--a sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

To walk out of His will is to walk into nowhere.

There seems no reason for describing as hypocritical the short-lived piety of those whose religion fades away once they have emerged from 'danger, necessity, or tribulation.' Why should they not have been sincere? They were desperate and they howled for help. Who wouldn't?

We do not disparage silver by distinguishing it from gold.

But of course, when they ask for a "lead from the church," most people mean they want the clergy to put out a political program. That is silly. The clergy are those particular people within the whole church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live forever. And we are asking them to do a quite different job, for which they have not been trained. The job is really on us- on the laymen.

We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer.

Oh, hijos de Adán, ¡con qué habilidad os defendéis de todo lo que os puede hacer bien!

-¡Qué hermoso eres! Puedes comerme si quieres. Prefiero que me devores tú a servir de alimento a cualquier otro.