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If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful.

C. S. Lewis

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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
Age
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Precisely
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Choose
Books

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair.
C. S. Lewis
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Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan.
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If one could run without getting tired I don't think one would often want to do anything else.
C. S. Lewis
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The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'
C. S. Lewis
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The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims up on them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure.
C. S. Lewis
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Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.
C. S. Lewis
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Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it.
C. S. Lewis
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God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.
C. S. Lewis
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If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?
C. S. Lewis
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The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.
C. S. Lewis
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This is my password, said the King as he drew his sword. The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.
C. S. Lewis
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There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell, if it lay in my power. But it has the support of Scripture and, especially, of our Lord's own words it has always been held by the Christian Church, and it has the support of reason.
C. S. Lewis
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Heaven will display far more variety than Hell.
C. S. Lewis
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Those who tread 'adult' as a term of approval cannot hope to be considered adult themselves. When I became a man I put away childish things, along with the desire to be very grown up.
C. S. Lewis
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When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].
C. S. Lewis
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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
C. S. Lewis
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Delight is incomplete until it is expressed.
C. S. Lewis
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If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
C. S. Lewis
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A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
C. S. Lewis
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And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
C. S. Lewis