Updated: 6/25/2020

• (CCSLQ-55) Another Fake Screwtape Quote – Souls to Hell (posted 6/20/2020)
• (CCSLQ-54) 1942 Fake Lewis Quote – Satan vs. Jesus

MORE MATERIAL BELOW:

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The following serves as an OVERVIEW for a series begun in late August, 2015. Updates were initially done weekly, then monthly, and now because my book (The Misquotable C.S. Lewis) based on this material was released on March 16, 2018 (purchase from the publisher or preview it on Google Books), I’m going back to posting weekly (except for holiday weekends) to feature material not yet shared (but the content in my book is expanded).  You might also want to join my group on Facebook where you can easily ask questions about quotations not covered here.  

As you might guess from the title, the focus is on exploring quotations attributed to C.S. Lewis that may or may not be from him. While I’ve written and spoken on the topic previously, this page is the “go to” place to find out what quotes I’ve examined (or plan to). But, again, my book contains updated/revised information. 

Below are the links to the actual articles. If there is no link yet, then that means the article hasn’t been released yet, even though my book does explore it.

Also note that because a quote is listed below, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is NOT from Lewis. As the result of my investigations I’ve come up with three types, or categories that are explained in my INTRODUCTION to Confirming C.S. Lewis Quotations article. So, be sure to follow this link to understand the categories I’ve created.

Additionally, I’ve written three articles that summarized the most visited posts.  The first piece features the Top 5 Questionable Lewis Quotes for 2015 (from among the first sixteen articles I wrote up to that point). Then, in late 2016 I did a Top 10 Questionable Lewis Quotes from twenty-nine posts that had been published. Then, in late 2017, I was asked to write an online article for Christianity Today; it was released on Nov. 22, 2017.

Finally, if you are of an audio person, then consider listening to a series of podcasts I created that deal with this topic, as well as a few misconceptions about Lewis. 

The Questionable Quotes

Select whichever quotation you will like to learn more about why it is questionable. In some cases it is either close to what Lewis actually said, or the context makes it *questionable* to share because it could be misunderstood.

• (CCSLQ-1) “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
• (CCSLQ-2) “We read to know/discover that we are not alone”
• (CCSLQ-3) “Experience that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
• (CCSLQ-4) “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.”
• (CCSLQ-5) “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
• (CCSLQ-6) “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”
• (CCSLQ-7) “You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.”
• (CCSLQ-8) “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
• (CCSLQ-9) “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most perfect person that I can think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing ever.”
• (CCSLQ-10) “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
• (CCSLQ-11) “It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.”
• (CCSLQ-12) “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars—let go to move forward”
• (CCSLQ-13) “Do the right thing when no one is looking.” OR “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
• (CCSLQ-14) “It is a happy moment when our desire crosses with the will of Heavenly Father.”
• (CCSLQ-15) “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun. Not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else.”
• (CCSLQ-16) “No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet.”
• [SPECIAL] Top 5 Questionable Lewis Quotes for 2015
• (CCSLQ-17) “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
• (CCSLQ-18) “The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”
• (CCSLQ-19) “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career.”
• (CCSLQ-20) “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
• (CCSLQ-21) “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
• (CCSLQ-22) “Don’t shine so others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see Him.”
• (CCSLQ-23) “Everything is different because of the Resurrection.”
• (CCSLQ-24) “Try to remember that the ‘bottomless sea’ can’t hurt us as long as we keep on swimming.”
• (CCSLQ-25) “You doubt your value, don’t run from who you are.”
• (CCSLQ-26) “You can’t know. You can only believe- or not.”
• (CCSLQ-27) – “Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”
• (CCSLQ-28) – “Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
• (CCSLQ-29) – “A friend is someone who know the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”
• [SPECIAL] Top 10 Questionable Lewis Quotes
• (CCSLQ-30) – “Be weird. Be random. Be who you are. Because you never know who would love the person you hide.”
• (CCSLQ-31) – “My prayer is that when I die, all of hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.”
• (CCSLQ-32) – “Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics…”
• (CCSLQ-33) – “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.” 
• (CCSLQ-34) – “God always hears the cry of suffering, and God always sees the oppression of the weak, and God demands that we be a people who do the same.”
• (CCSLQ-35) – “There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me.”
• (CCSLQ-36) – “The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can’t supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.”
• (CCSLQ-37) – “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
• (CCSLQ-38) – “It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him.”
• (CCSLQ-39) – “Denial is the shock absorber for the soul. It protects us until we are equipped to cope with reality.”
• (CCSLQ-40) – “The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God’s care as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is just as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. And neither can we do anything, and both God is doing everything.” 
• (CCSLQ-41) “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
• (CCSLQ-42) “To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness in yourself.” 
• (CCSLQ-43) “Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.”
• (CCSLQ-44) “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
• (CCSLQ-45) – “You won’t get credit for bowing when standing isn’t an option.” 
• (CCSLQ-46) – “The grand point is not to wear the garb, nor use the brogue of religion, but to process the life of God within, and feel and think as Jesus would have done because of that inner life. Small is the value of extended religion, unless it is the outcome of a life within.”
• (CCSLQ-47) –  “Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.”
• (CCSLQ-48) –  “Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.” (posting 3/10/18)
• (CCSLQ-49) –  “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.” 
• (CCSLQ-50) – “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
• (CCSLQ-51) – “No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.” 
• (CCSLQ-52) – “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”
• (CCSLQ-53) – “Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.” 
• (CCSLQ-XX) – “Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.” (NOT YET POSTED)
• (CCSLQ-XX) – “In your life you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some that you wish you never have to think about again. But you do.” (NOT YET POSTED)

ADDITIONAL QUOTES EXAMINED IN MY BOOK:

1. “Reality looked at steadily is unbearable.”
2. “The Grotesque is a ridge from which one can descend into very different valleys.”
3. “A little lie is like a little pregnancy-it doesn’t take long before everyone knows.”
4. “C.S. Lewis remarked that the goal of the Left is to ‘make pornography public and religion private.’”
5. “A woman’s heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her.”
6. “Life is too deep for words, so don’t try to describe it, just live it.”
7. “On the back of Satan’s neck is a nail scarred footprint.”
8. “There are, by best estimates, currently approximately eight billion people in the world. Each person is unique; each person has a purpose; each person extraordinary. We always must watch ourselves when we begin to believe someone is ordinary.”
9. “We are what we believe we are.”
10. “Everything that is not eternal is worthless in eternity.”
11. “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.”
12. “Reason is the natural order of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
13. “The birth of Christ is the central event in the history of the earth – the very thing the whole story has been about.”
14. “I want God. Not my idea of God.”
15. “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
16. “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Law Giver. ”
    
17. “What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”