When you talk about some famous Christian quotes you almost always see at least one from C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis had a gift for words and his words live on today through his famous quotes. Here are some of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis organized by topic. Do you have a favorite C.S. Lewis quote? Add it to the comments!
Featured C.S. Lewis Quote
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
C. S. Lewis On Love
“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained”
“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives”
“Have you not seen that in our days
Of any whose story, song or art
Delights us, our sincerest praise
Means, when all’s said, ‘You break my heart?”
“Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.”
“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
Friendship Quotes
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”
“In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
Quotes About Faith
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
“[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”
“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”
Christianity Quotes
“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.”
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
C. S. Lewis About Obedience
“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
“I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?”
Heaven Quotes
“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.”
“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?”
Quotes About Life
“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?”
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
Do you have a favorite C.S. Lewis quote? If so add it to the comments!
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Awesome work Josh. I just love the sheer logic that this late Christian apologist writes with. One of my favorites is:
“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents-the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts-i.e. of materialism and astronomy-are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.”
Great quote Jack, thanks for sharing!
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”
Excellent quote Hope. I cannot wait until that great day when we will all stand before the throne singing, shouting, dancing and worshiping our Father and the Lamb. This is the hope that we have. Thanks. :0)
I am so with you on that Joe. Thank you sir for your wonderful comment. I will tell the writer, Josh, of this article. I await that Great Day my friend. Please come back and grace us again with your words.
Aslan through the eyes of Mr. Beaver:
“Of course he’s not safe, but he’s good!”
Very good quote Michele. Well done. I had not remembered that one. Thank you for your quote and please come back and visit us again soon when you can.
Every time I see the word aslan my eyes read Asian and I get confused
Amen Jen. I can understand that. They are very close. Great point. I do know that Aslan is a symbolic type of character that represents Jesus.
One of my favorites:
“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.”
Great collection!
I am trying to find this quote by C.S. Lewis. “God will make a God”. Can anyone let me know where that is found. IN other words…..”As man is, God once was, as God is, man may become.”
Sorry Reid, I do not know this one.
”As man is, God once was, as God is, man may become.”
I believe this is an LDS statement of eternal progression from human to deity by Lorenzo Snow.
Thank you Scott but I am compelled to tell you sir that this is unbiblical. Over and over Scripture says that Jesus has always existed. He was not created. He was not born of heavenly parents. He existed before all things. He has existed for eternity.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” – (NASB) John 8:58 (Reference Exodus 3:14 in which God says His name is “I AM”. Jesus is using a play on words to apply the same name to himself.)
“He [Jesus] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” – (NASB) Colossians 1:17
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – (NASB) John 1:1 (See John 1:14 – And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us… The “Word” is Jesus.)
“When I saw Him [Jesus], I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead and behold, I am alive forevermore…” – (NASB) Revelation 1:17-18
“From you One [Jesus] will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” – (NASB) Micah 5:2
That the Son of God (Jesus) has always existed is a fact that is repeated throughout the Bible. Colossians 1:17 says that Jesus existed before everything else. NOTHING existed before Jesus. C.S. Lewis would agree.
“It is a great thing to be a child of God; we should live each day as if it is our last but plan as though our world might last a hundred years.”
Does anyone know where this quote came from? I heard it on a tv show and it said it was a quote from C. S. Lewis but I don’t know what it’s a quote from…
Hi Elizabeth…I have tried but failed to find it. I can believe it would be this man’s though. So sorry I wasn’t able too.