Quote

There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

C. S. Lewis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Broadcaster
Essayist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Happiness
Makes
Kind
Good
Jokes
Waste
Joy
Serious
Wonder

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

Image
The humblest praise most, while cranks & malcontents praise least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible
C. S. Lewis
Image
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
C. S. Lewis
Image
What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?
C. S. Lewis
Image
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. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'
C. S. Lewis
Image
And she never could remember and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.
C. S. Lewis
Image
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.
C. S. Lewis
Image
I daren't come and drink, said Jill. Then you will die of thirst, said the Lion. Oh dear! said Jill, coming another step nearer.I suppose I must go and look for another stream then. There is no other stream, said the Lion.
C. S. Lewis
Image
But he always licked to get visitors alone in the billiard room and tell them stories about a mysterious lady, a foreign royalty, with whom he had driven about London. 'A devilish temper she had,' he would say. 'But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
C. S. Lewis
Image
It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day. (Epitaph for Joy Gresham)
C. S. Lewis
Image
The world was made partly that there may be prayer partly that our prayers might be answered.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Hail Lord, ...Loose my chains.
C. S. Lewis
Image
We do not want merely to see beauty... we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses, and nymphs and elves.
C. S. Lewis