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

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was 'the sort of person who is always snooping around to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.'
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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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All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
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I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.
C. S. Lewis
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Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.
C. S. Lewis
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Well,' said Ransom, 'if it is a delusion, it's a pretty stubborn one.
C. S. Lewis
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Every object you see before you at this moment -the walls, ceiling, and furniture, the book, your own washed hands and cut fingernails, bears witness to the colonization of Nature of Reason.
C. S. Lewis
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[the difference between the old and the new education being] in a word, the old was a kind of propagation-men transmitting manhood to men the new is merely propaganda.
C. S. Lewis
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The humblest praise most, while cranks & malcontents praise least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible
C. S. Lewis
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Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others.
C. S. Lewis
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When I'm older I'll understand said Lucy, I am older and I don't think I want to understand, replied Edmund
C. S. Lewis
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Ideally, we should like to define a good book as one which 'permits, invites, or compels' good reading
C. S. Lewis
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What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.
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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At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies Friendship naked personalities.
C. S. Lewis
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There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.
C. S. Lewis
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I was not born to be free---I was born to adore and obey.
C. S. Lewis
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There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.
C. S. Lewis
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I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside of their special subject.
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