34 thoughts on “Contest/Giveaway – The Misquotable C.S. Lewis”

1. “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is what the little decisions you and I make everyday are of such infinite importance.” CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

2. “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
   From the Weight of Glory

3. “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

   Conclusion to Mere Christianity

4. “My model here is the behaviour of the congregation at a ‘Russian Orthodox’ service, where some sit, some lie on their faces, some stand, some kneel, some walk about, and no one takes the slightest notice of what anyone else is doing. That is good sense, good manners, and good Christianity. ‘Mind one’s own business’ is a good rule in religion as in other things . . .”
   Letter to a Mrs. Ashton in 1956

5. “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.” From The Weight of Glory, essay “Is Theology Poetry?”

6. “For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.“ Equality in Present Concerns Journalistic Essays

7. CORRECT Quote:
   “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, then most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
   Mere Christianity bk 3, chapter 10 (paragraph 5)

   This is how is it commonly MISQUOTED in social media:
   “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

8. Some people when they say that a thing is meant “metaphorically” conclude from this that is is hardly meant at all. They rightly think that Christ spoke metaphorically when he told us to carry the cross: they wrongly conclude that carrying the cross means nothing more than leading a respectable life and subscribing moderately to charities. They reasonably think hell “fire” is a metaphor–and unwisely conclude that it means nothing more serious than remorse. They say the story of the Fall in Genesis is not literal; and then go on to say … that it was really a fall upwards–which is like saying that because “My heart is broken” contains a metaphor, it therefore means “I feel very cheerful.” This mode of interpretation I regard, frankly, as nonsense. —Miracles

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

10. “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.” Mere Christianity.

11. Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes any love possible or goodness or joy worth having.

12. A Christian is not someone who never goes wrong, but one who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin again, because Christ -life is inside him.
    -Mere Christianity

13. “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

14. He had read of ‘Space’: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now — now that the very name ‘Space’ seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it ‘dead’; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren; he saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the Earth with so many eyes — and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens — the heavens which declared the glory — the
    ‘happy climes that ly
    Where day never shuts his eye
    Up in the broad fields of the sky.’
    He quoted Milton’s words to himself lovingly, at this time and often.

    – From ‘Out of the Silent Planet’.

15. “Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’.”
    ~Letter to Arthur Greeves, 10/18/1931

16. “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
    I love these words because I have finally become old enough to start reading fairy tales again myself. With older eyes, we see beloved works in fresh new ways.

17. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
    From the essay: ON THREE WAYS OF WRITING FOR CHILDREN

18. “Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast — all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”

    – C.S. Lewis, “Preface to Paradise Lost”

19. There is no escape along the lines St Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason. ‘I knew thee that thou wert a hard man.’ Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.

20. ‘A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun. …He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. …It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or more beautiful.’ (The Horse and His Boy)

21. “Poor old Lu”
    From TLTWATW

22. “The more a man was in the Devil’s power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he’s drunk.” – C S Lewis, an essay in “God in the Dock”

23. “The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” From Mere Christianity

    Beautifully said.

24. “When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, ‘Look!’ The whole party gathers rounds and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ‘We would be at Jerusalem.’ Not, of course, that I don’t often catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of even less importance.”

    ~Surprised By Joy, chap. XV

25. “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.”

    Source: “Is Theology Poetry” (1945)

26. Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
    – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

27. The chuckle-headed humans think we’re only petty poppetry,
    And all our battle-tackle nothing more than pretty bric-a-brac;
    But a little shrub has prickles and they’ll soon be in a pickle…
    Narnians suite from Poems

28. To construct plausible and moving ‘other worlds’
    you must draw on the only real ‘other world’ we know, that of the Spirit.
    Of Other Worlds, C. S. Lewis

29. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
    CS Lewis ” The Weight of Glory”

30. 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.

    C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

31. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

32. “There are two kinds of self-hatred which look rather alike in their earlier stages, but of which one is wrong from the beginning and the other right to the end.”

33. CONTEST IS NOW OVER…

    The following won the book:

    Roy Robinson
    Tim Lucas
    Brad Hill
    Christian Ransom Puddleglum Harper

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