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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

Image
Got to start by finding it, have we? Can't start by looking for it, I suppose?
C. S. Lewis
Image
Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
C. S. Lewis
Image
When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of innocent love.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C. S. Lewis
Image
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Everyone who believes in God at all believes that he knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow.
C. S. Lewis
Image
To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.
C. S. Lewis
Image
We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Have you not seen that in our days Of any whose story, song or art Delights us, our sincerest praise Means, when all's said, 'You break my heart?
C. S. Lewis
Image
All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.
C. S. Lewis
Image
If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it the old Christian rule is, Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.
C. S. Lewis