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Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.

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
Thrown
Second
Lose
Loses
Firsts
First
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I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.
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Jewel,' he said, 'what lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy.
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What can be better than to get out a book on Saturday afternoon and thrust all mundane considerations away till next week.
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Father! Can I box him? Please!
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The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.
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Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.
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We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations. Like motoring-don't wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off.
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The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.
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My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
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Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.
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It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.
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Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.
C. S. Lewis
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In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out. - Mere Christianity
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The event of falling in love... in one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being.
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A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food.
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What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
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Friendship is...the sort of love one can imagine between angels.
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The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.
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Prosperity knits a man to the world.
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It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men.
C. S. Lewis