Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them. C. S. Lewis More Quotes by C. S. Lewis More Quotes From C. S. Lewis The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble. C. S. Lewis realhurtkindness A clever arrangement of bad eggs will never make a good omelet. C. S. Lewis visioneggsclever If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. C. S. Lewis spiritualinspirationallife Evil comes from the ABUSE of free will C. S. Lewis free-willabuseevil Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all. C. S. Lewis lost-lovehatredlove-is What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' C. S. Lewis heavenlongfather God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. C. S. Lewis intellectualchristianthinking There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. C. S. Lewis pridehumilitychristian Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world. C. S. Lewis christianwritingbook Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Lewis libertarian-partydemocracies-havetyrants Delight is incomplete until it is expressed. C. S. Lewis incompletedelight The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life. C. S. Lewis interruptionstruth-isinspirational Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. C. S. Lewis atheistchristianlooks Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into a glory C. S. Lewis agonygloryheaven I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. C. S. Lewis safegivingbelieve It is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. C. S. Lewis satisfactiondesirefriendship 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. C. S. Lewis flowercountryart The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity", and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man. C. S. Lewis justicementhinking And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. C. S. Lewis ambitiongodwar Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. C. S. Lewis inspirational-lifetakenmen
