Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.


C.S. Lewis

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear...
C.S. LEWIS
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and...
ROSE MACAULAY
Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strengt...
MARQUIS DE SADE
Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a p...
SIMON BARNES
Fuck the past. This was the present.
MAGGIE STIEFVATER
The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.
J. I. PACKER
Life is a competition to eliminate fear and doubts to double our life to live better not bitter in t...
NAZIM AMBALATH
The present is an eternal attempt to separate the past from the future.
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA
Most of your reactions are echoes from the past. You do not really live in the present.
GAELIC PROVERB
Happy is the person who knows what to remember of the past, what to enjoy in the present, and what t...
ARNOLD H. GLASGOW
The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of ...
AGNES REPPLIER
Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine....
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
I don't define lust as anything evil or nasty. Lust as defined by me, is the feeling of desire: a de...
C. JOYBELL C.
History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the pre...
JOHN BERGER
Reinvent yourself. Don't let your past weigh you down.
MARTY RUBIN
It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is...
MARCEL PROUST
You can't judge the present by the past. Each day is different, and you live it differently.
MARTY RUBIN
Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Was life like that? You could look ahead to the future or back to the past, but the present moved to...
BRANDON MULL
Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be...
GARY F EVANS...
It's Lust at First Sight, Not Love at First Sight. Love Requires First to Understand and Appreciate,...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU
Being clingy may work for puppies, but not for you.
OSCAR AULIQ-ICE
Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
The 20th century has been a century of bloodshed. The present century, because of our past experienc...
DALAI LAMA
Kerry is an adult - he thinks things through. He learns from the present as well as the past. To Geo...
RICHARD DREYFUSS
Invent a past for the present.
DANIEL STERN
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now
EUGENE O'NEILL
I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don't deny the past, but it's a page to turn.
JULIETTE BINOCHE
My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ
I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That...
DONALD TRUMP
The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
Most of your reactions are echoes from the past.
You do not really live in the present.
GAELIC PROVERB
The museum would have one foot in the past and one foot in the present.
GORDON HUETHER
Now is everything
Now is the essence
Now is the focus
Focus on the now
For that ...
KAREN HACKEL
A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatn...
JOHN STEINBECK
I’d wish it were easier to not allow other people’s pasts to create my own present.
JONATHAN HARNISCH
Today is the tomorrow we were were anxiously waiting for yesterday. We must embrace it with our whol...
ETTA SAWYERR
Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
I'm a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.
GLEN COOK
I'd sooner make fresh mistakes today than correct the errors of the past.
MARTY RUBIN
Ambition is the ecclesiastical lust.
DANIEL NOONAN
It is no exaggeration to say that the rich own most of what there is that is not nailed down.
PAUL ROBERT WOLFF
In the present, there is only the here and now.
For the past is gone and the future has yet to a...
GABRIELLA GODDARD
Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.
TANITH LEE
Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all. The bonds of...
THOMAS HOBBES
The past never quite disappeared, did it? Folks usually thought time moved forward, starting on the ...
BRANDY HEINEMAN
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as...
THOMAS HOBBES
We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL
...for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
The past is full of regret, the future fear, and the present joy.
JIM GENOVESE
Congratulations, to the people which made gotham series, still need some more and extra work!
DEYTH BANGER
To have the cognitive abilities to do research and development is vital to a forever expanding world...
GARY F EVANS...
The first and foremost human right or fundamental right is the right to exist.
APURVA GAGLANI
If we ever put research into what the subconscious is we could probably come to the conclusion that ...
GARY F EVANS...
i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g...
SIMI GREWAL
The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
A fool dwells in the past while a idiot looks to the unforeseen while the wise looks at the present ...
SYNECA DE JORMUNGAND
The past is behind, learn from it.The future is ahead, prepare for it.The present is here, live it.
THOMAS S. MONSON
Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present...
BIL KEANE
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
What we are left with then is the present, the only time where miracles happen. We place the past an...
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past. I want...
ALEX RODRIGUEZ
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the fu...
FREDERICK DOUGLAS
We forgot about that a long time ago. The past is gone. We're more excited about the present and we ...
BRANDON HEATH
The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost.
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
Shallow men speak of the past; wise men of the present and fools of the future
MADAME MARIE DU DEFFAND
The past, the present, the future: migration is what matters.
GUILLERMO ALONSO
Think there is nothing we can do to change the past, so we have to look at the present to make sure ...
HEINZ FISCHER
The basic (theme) is the past catching up with the present, ... It's how the actions of one affects ...
HOWARD WILSON
There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present
LILIAN EICHLER WATSON
He who knows the past well can best explain the present and can tell the probable certainties and un...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
The past is full of of regret, the future fear, and the present joy.
JIM GENOVESE
I feel so honored to be able to say "What I do is for my son" without that being an excuse to do stu...
C. JOYBELL C.
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine....
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
SYDNEY HOOK
Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
SIDNEY HOOK
Don't sacrifice the present and attempt to achieve the impossible- to completely correct the past......
ASSEGID HABTEWOLD
One must simply take the days of their lives as they happen. If you spend time worrying over what is...
R.J. GONZALES
All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this w...
C.S. LEWIS
Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thin...
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The past is always subject to the change that the present brings to the future.
JAIME CONTRERAS
Look at the swell. You'll not find a bigger swell anywhere. It has half the globe for its run-up. Yo...
CARSTEN JENSEN
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine....
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Paul's one thing was committing to forget about the past, to forge ahead into the future.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
You learned right away that applause sounds like love.
AVA DELLAIRA
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
SALLUST
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
SIR WALTER SCOTT
The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never...
PETER BENCHLEY
The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and...
PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP
Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world. When we come with condemn...
TONY CAMPOLO
A fool stares up looking at the sky stating its the limit, a idiots look down at the ground stating ...
SYNECA DE JORMUNGAND
I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and b...
LYDIA MILLET
Your past doesn't actually exist. What you think is your past is a tiny blip of electricity in your ...
DAN PEARCE
Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore ha...
C. JOYBELL C.
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is an...
JAMES THURBER
He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future
QUEVEDO

More C.S. Lewis

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, ...
C.S. LEWIS
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't mer...
C.S. LEWIS
There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.
C.S. LEWIS
The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, ...
C.S. LEWIS
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are
C.S. LEWIS
The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some d...
C.S. LEWIS
I have said that she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of ...
C.S. LEWIS
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this ide...
C.S. LEWIS
When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest bette...
C.S. LEWIS
Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that ...
C.S. LEWIS
We turn first ter the bleedin' parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Guvn...
C.S. LEWIS
... the very last thing I want to do is to unsettle in the mind of any Christian, whatever his denom...
C.S. LEWIS
If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should...
C.S. LEWIS
It is hard to have patience with people who say There is no death or Death doesn't matter. There is ...
C.S. LEWIS
What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.
C.S. LEWIS
The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to...
C.S. LEWIS
You can make anything by writing.
C.S. LEWIS
I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep sile...
C.S. LEWIS
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have re...
C.S. LEWIS
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found...
C.S. LEWIS
God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.
C.S. LEWIS
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you st...
C.S. LEWIS
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as i...
C.S. LEWIS
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. LEWIS
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – wo...
C.S. LEWIS
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can u...
C.S. LEWIS
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
C.S. LEWIS
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
C.S. LEWIS
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slight...
C.S. LEWIS
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C.S. LEWIS
Nos acercaremos a Dios no con el intento de evitar los sufrimientos inherentes a todos los amores, s...
C.S. LEWIS
Hence as the poet says: People in love cannot be moved by kindness, And opposition makes them feel l...
C.S. LEWIS
Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It i...
C.S. LEWIS
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the s...
C.S. LEWIS
Emerson has said, "When half-gods go, the gods arrive." That is a very doubtful maxim. Better say, "...
C.S. LEWIS
For most of us the true rivalry lies between the self and the human Other, not yet between the human...
C.S. LEWIS
But for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has bee...
C.S. LEWIS
I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, "But, sir, aren'...
C.S. LEWIS
Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as "Careful! This might l...
C.S. LEWIS
The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even re...
C.S. LEWIS
You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as...
C.S. LEWIS
Just as there are none good but God, and nothing good but goodness, so there are no loves but love i...
C.S. LEWIS
What I have called Appreciative love is no basic element in Affection. It usually needs absence or b...
C.S. LEWIS
Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for ...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o...
C.S. LEWIS
Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like café complet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, g...
C.S. LEWIS
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the s...
C.S. LEWIS
La amistad nace en el momento en el que una persona le dice a la otra: ¿Qué? ¿Tú también ? Pens...
C.S. LEWIS
If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christen...
C.S. LEWIS
A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot val...
C.S. LEWIS
Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that...
C.S. LEWIS
Eros, honoured without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon.
C.S. LEWIS
The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w...
C.S. LEWIS
Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brute...
C.S. LEWIS
Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that...
C.S. LEWIS
If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having b...
C.S. LEWIS
He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is th...
C.S. LEWIS
If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to le...
C.S. LEWIS
And as all Christians know there is another way of giving to God; every stranger whom we feed or clo...
C.S. LEWIS
Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-decept...
C.S. LEWIS
Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a miser...
C.S. LEWIS
Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice te...
C.S. LEWIS
Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre...
C.S. LEWIS
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life...
C.S. LEWIS
In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endur...
C.S. LEWIS
Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved.
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school ...
C.S. LEWIS
Liking and Loves for the Sub-Human

“Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love ...
C.S. LEWIS
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ...
C.S. LEWIS
We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physi...
C.S. LEWIS
El amor empieza a ser un demonio desde el momento en que comienza a ser un dios.
C.S. LEWIS
Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines ...
C.S. LEWIS
We were made for God. Only by being in some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His b...
C.S. LEWIS
Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experien...
C.S. LEWIS
A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one...
C.S. LEWIS
What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but ...
C.S. LEWIS
Amar é, sempre, ser vulnerável. Para que nunca se sofra com isso, aconselha-se não se amar algo, ...
C.S. LEWIS
Nothing in Man is either worse or better for being shared with the beasts.
C.S. LEWIS
Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need...
C.S. LEWIS
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping ...
C.S. LEWIS
When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has ...
C.S. LEWIS
It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fru...
C.S. LEWIS
Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
C.S. LEWIS
While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwh...
C.S. LEWIS
Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.
C.S. LEWIS
It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious fr...
C.S. LEWIS
We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be
naturally loved.
C.S. LEWIS
The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It w...
C.S. LEWIS
We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude o...
C.S. LEWIS
Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public ...
C.S. LEWIS
But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies ha...
C.S. LEWIS
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself ...
C.S. LEWIS
Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for Go...
C.S. LEWIS
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
C.S. LEWIS
For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes ...
C.S. LEWIS
Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration ...
C.S. LEWIS
In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which ...
C.S. LEWIS
The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT ...
C.S. LEWIS
We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become ...
C.S. LEWIS
Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appre...
C.S. LEWIS
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for m...
C.S. LEWIS
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. ...
C.S. LEWIS
[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense i...
C.S. LEWIS
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted crea...
C.S. LEWIS
I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you wan...
C.S. LEWIS
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but becaus...
C.S. LEWIS
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love ...
C.S. LEWIS
We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sa...
C.S. LEWIS
Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be ...
C.S. LEWIS
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll h...
C.S. LEWIS
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as...
C.S. LEWIS
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make ev...
C.S. LEWIS
The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where th...
C.S. LEWIS
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will ...
C.S. LEWIS
Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden ...
C.S. LEWIS
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those t...
C.S. LEWIS
I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as...
C.S. LEWIS
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know ...
C.S. LEWIS
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looki...
C.S. LEWIS
Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
C.S. LEWIS
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civil...
C.S. LEWIS
The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea...
C.S. LEWIS
At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or ...
C.S. LEWIS
As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may thin...
C.S. LEWIS
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our nat...
C.S. LEWIS
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
C.S. LEWIS
In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
C.S. LEWIS
Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the s...
C.S. LEWIS
Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist...
C.S. LEWIS
People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.
C.S. LEWIS
Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of ...
C.S. LEWIS
The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but t...
C.S. LEWIS
I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no sh...
C.S. LEWIS
He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no...
C.S. LEWIS
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ...
C.S. LEWIS
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun...
C.S. LEWIS
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the b...
C.S. LEWIS
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
C.S. LEWIS
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good be...
C.S. LEWIS
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explana...
C.S. LEWIS
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y...
C.S. LEWIS
You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.
C.S. LEWIS
When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, ...
C.S. LEWIS
In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates o...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one ...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no ...
C.S. LEWIS
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C.S. LEWIS
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
C.S. LEWIS
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up o...
C.S. LEWIS
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he...
C.S. LEWIS
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking d...
C.S. LEWIS
They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you.
Since but one voice is heard, i...
C.S. LEWIS
Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,...
C.S. LEWIS
Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is ...
C.S. LEWIS
The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I wa...
C.S. LEWIS
Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, ...
C.S. LEWIS
Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to av...
C.S. LEWIS
We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris-
ing generation. I am an oldster myself and...
C.S. LEWIS
Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike t...
C.S. LEWIS
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
C.S. LEWIS
And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, am...
C.S. LEWIS
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
C.S. LEWIS
Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon hi...
C.S. LEWIS
I desired dragons with a profound desire.
C.S. LEWIS
What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on wh...
C.S. LEWIS
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole w...
C.S. LEWIS
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of...
C.S. LEWIS
But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do ...
C.S. LEWIS
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect th...
C.S. LEWIS
Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Ind...
C.S. LEWIS
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot ...
C.S. LEWIS
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
C.S. LEWIS
We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shov...
C.S. LEWIS
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but becaus...
C.S. LEWIS
In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A y...
C.S. LEWIS
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies t...
C.S. LEWIS
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
C.S. LEWIS
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give...
C.S. LEWIS
Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he...
C.S. LEWIS
You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own m...
C.S. LEWIS
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that...
C.S. LEWIS
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explan...
C.S. LEWIS
All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are...
C.S. LEWIS
A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from thos...
C.S. LEWIS
Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.
C.S. LEWIS
What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong tu...
C.S. LEWIS
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precis...
C.S. LEWIS
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead ...
C.S. LEWIS
Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither.
C.S. LEWIS
“If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we ...
C.S. LEWIS
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possib...
C.S. LEWIS
If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of t...
C.S. LEWIS
Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, b...
C.S. LEWIS
I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The gre...
C.S. LEWIS
The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epic...
C.S. LEWIS
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense ...
C.S. LEWIS
The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small pric...
C.S. LEWIS