Quote

Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can’t provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.

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
Every
Entertainment
Good
Fiction
Excused
Like
Higher
Qualifying
Quality
Inquiring
Less
Examination
May
Entertaining
Book
Qualities
Must
Provide

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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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.
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God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.
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Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
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Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.
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If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
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The mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind legs off a donkey.
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Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night —little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.
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Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated
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As image and apprehension are in organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.
C. S. Lewis
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The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.
C. S. Lewis
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The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
C. S. Lewis
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With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.
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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From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.
C. S. Lewis
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All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
C. S. Lewis
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You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.
C. S. Lewis
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The longer we stay in Hell, the more we become attached to it.
C. S. Lewis
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Badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
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The human mind is generally far more eager to praise or dispraise than it is to describe and define.
C. S. Lewis
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There is someone I accept even though I do not approve of all he does...and that someone is me
C. S. Lewis