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An author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.

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
Simply
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More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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The world was made partly that there may be prayer partly that our prayers might be answered.
C. S. Lewis
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I have come, said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him.
C. S. Lewis
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To admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.
C. S. Lewis
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For they (art and music) are not the thing itself they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
C. S. Lewis
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Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.
C. S. Lewis
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There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.
C. S. Lewis
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Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority... Every historical event in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada.
C. S. Lewis
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We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
C. S. Lewis
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For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means... the power of some men to make other men what THEY please.
C. S. Lewis
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Reason is the natural order of truth but imagination is the organ of meaning.
C. S. Lewis
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Safe?” said Mr. Beaver “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
C. S. Lewis
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If these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of 'religion.'
C. S. Lewis
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It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.
C. S. Lewis
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It would be nice and fairly nearly true, to say that 'from that time forth, Eustace was a different boy.' To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.
C. S. Lewis
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Puddleglum's my name. But it doesn't matter if you forget it. I can always tell you again.
C. S. Lewis
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The mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind legs off a donkey.
C. S. Lewis
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The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday and then find on Wednesday that it hasn't stayed put and all has to be done over again.
C. S. Lewis
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When you have reached your own room, be kind to those Who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.
C. S. Lewis
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Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers.
C. S. Lewis
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Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
C. S. Lewis