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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

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C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
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Essayist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
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Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
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More quotes by 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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If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.
C. S. Lewis
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We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge.
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The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.
C. S. Lewis
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A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.
C. S. Lewis
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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
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The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.
C. S. Lewis
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You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.
C. S. Lewis
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Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.
C. S. Lewis
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Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
C. S. Lewis
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On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.
C. S. Lewis
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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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Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it's a sign that you've got an extraordinary destiny--something greater than you could've imagined.
C. S. Lewis
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We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century [...] lies where we have never suspected it [...] The only palliative is [...] by reading old books. [...] the books of the future would be just as good [...], but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
C. S. Lewis
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Even I never dreamed of Magic like this!
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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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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A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.
C. S. Lewis
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The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
C. S. Lewis
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The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author's mind.
C. S. Lewis