CS Lewis

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

"Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!"

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.'

"If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him."

"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."

"He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less."

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

"The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."

"Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny."

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

"I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him."

"Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

"The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not."

"Die before you die, there is no chance after."

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

"The stamp of the Saint is that he can waive his own rights and obey the Lord Jesus."

"It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to."

"I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."

"A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."

"When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on."

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

"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."

"Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it."

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."

"No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth'."

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way."

"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?"

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened."

"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."

"There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan."

"Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst."

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in."

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

"For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John."

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone."

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"

"[Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self -will that we have been training ourselves into... It means killing part of yourself, under-going a kind of death."

"We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain kind."

"Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do."

"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all."

"Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed."

"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness."