Quote

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

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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
Hell
Insist
Something
Choices
Reign
Always
Heaven
Expressed
Words
Keeping
Lost
Price
Soul
Misery
Better
Serve
Even
Choice

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

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That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is out chance to chose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.
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Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?
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Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.
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Even if there were pains in Heaven, all who understand would desire them.
C. S. Lewis
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Humility, after the first shock, is cheerful virtue.
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I was not born to be free---I was born to adore and obey.
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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
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A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death.
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I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.
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If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?
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Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only liked: it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.
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Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly. 'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.
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A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food.
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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.
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For He (God) seems to do nothing of himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.
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Most people spend most of their lives doing neither what they want to be doing nor what they ought to be doing.
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Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again.
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But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.
C. S. Lewis
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Remember He is the artist and you are the picture. You can’t see it, you can't see your true self. So quietly submit to be painted.
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Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
C. S. Lewis