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There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he has read them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?

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
Hope
Settles
Matter
Sonnet
Never
Shakespeare
Men
Settling
Thinking
Thinks
Meaning
Says
Boswell
Read
Sonnets

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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You must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.
C. S. Lewis
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Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.
C. S. Lewis
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A God. The God. One word can make all the difference in the world.
C. S. Lewis
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Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.
C. S. Lewis
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A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be worth creating.
C. S. Lewis
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Welcome, Prince, said Aslan. Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia? I - I don't think I do, Sir, said Caspian. I'm only a kid. Good, said Aslan. If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.
C. S. Lewis
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You ask ‘for what’ God wants you. Isn’t the primary answer that He wants you. We’re not told that the lost sheep was sought out for anything except itself [Matthew 18:12-14 Luke 15:3-7]. Of course, He may have a special job for you: and the certain job is that of becoming more and more His.
C. S. Lewis
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Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.
C. S. Lewis
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There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'
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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There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.
C. S. Lewis
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Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior
C. S. Lewis
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Ink is the great cure for all human ills.
C. S. Lewis
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Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.
C. S. Lewis
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For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.
C. S. Lewis
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I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.
C. S. Lewis
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Nothing is really ours until we share it.
C. S. Lewis
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Daughter, I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall.
C. S. Lewis
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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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The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery.
C. S. Lewis