140 Famous C.S. Lewis Quotes & Sayings On Love, Life, God

C.S. Lewis quotes and sayings about love, God, life, and Christianity will make your day.

Clive Staples Lewis was born on29 November 1898 was a British writer, Christian apologist, Oxford professor, and lay theologian. He is still one of the most quoted and famous authors of all time. Before we indulge in the brilliant collection of C.S. Lewis quotes, let’s discuss some of the important facts about his life.

Born in Belfast, Lewis was fond of books at a very early age. Some of his favorite stories were Beatrix Potter and he developed an interest in writing and illustrating his own animal stories at a young age.

C.S. Lewis Quotes On God

Lewis was homeschooled until his mother died because of cancer then his father sent him to England to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. It was during these years that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an atheist.

In the coming years, Lewis had been through pain and suffering when he got injured in World War I but still he continued his search for a meaningful life. At the age of 32, he was very influenced by the writings of George McDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, and G. K Chesterton and came back to God.

As Lewis started believing again in God, his faith grew stronger over time. He kept working and publishing his writing during the time of World War II and touched millions of hearts.

In his later years, Lewis met his love of life, American writer, Joy Davidman. They got married on 23 April 1956 but later she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and died on 13 July 1960 at the age of 45. Their love story was told through the award-winning movie Shadowlands.

His struggle to find the answers about life and the meaning behind it continues as all can be seen greatly in his writings in the coming years. Many of his writings are on the topic of good, evil, moral awareness, and the existence of God and its creation.

C.S. Lewis published more than 30 books in his life and some of his greatest works include Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters. (read The Screwtape Letters quotes here)

The world lost this genius on November 22, 1963, in Oxford, England whose work continues to inspire many, leaving deep spiritual influence in our world still today.

Here we are sharing a collection of famous C.S. Lewis quotes and sayings about God, love, life, and death that will take you further on your spiritual path.

C.S. Lewis Quotes

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
C. S. Lewis

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
C. S. Lewis

“The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”
– C.S Lewis

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained” 
– C. S. Lewis

“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
– C.S Lewis

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”
C. S. Lewis

“We are what we believe we are.”
C. S. Lewis

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead like.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Love

“I wish I had never been born,” she said. “What are we born for?” “For infinite happiness,” said the Spirit. “You can step out into it at any moment…”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Did I hate him, then? Indeed, I believe so. A love like that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Suppose… suppose we have only dreamed and made up these things like sun, sky, stars, and moon, and Aslan himself. In that case, it seems to me that the made-up things are a good deal better than the real ones. And if this black pits of a kingdom is the best you can make, then it’s a poor world. And we four can make a dream world to lick your real one hollow.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

“To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.”
C. S. Lewis

“It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives” 
– C. S. Lewis

“Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.”
C. S. Lewis

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…”
C. S. Lewis

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On God

“Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly; you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true; you’ve been disappointed so often before.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to the experience.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” 
C. S. Lewis

“How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?”
― C.S. Lewis

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”  
C. S. Lewis

“The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.”
C.S Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Humility

“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

“I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?” 
– C. S. Lewis

“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?”  
– C. S. Lewis

“He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs–pairs of opposites…He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.”
― C.S. Lewis

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
C.S Lewis

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”
C. S. Lewis

“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, The Last Battle

“God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.”
C. S. Lewis

“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.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?” 
– C. S. Lewis

Best C.S. Lewis Quotes On Death

“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.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“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

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you do, and you will presently come to love him.”
C.S Lewis

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
C.S. Lewis

“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”” 
– C. S. Lewis

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“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.”  
– C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Life

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”
C.S. Lewis

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”
C.S. Lewis

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
C.S. Lewis

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“No man who says, ‘I’m as good as you,’ believes it. He would not say it if he did.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
 – C. S. Lewis

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
– C. S. Lewis

“It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.”
― C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Friendship

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life.”
C.S. Lewis

“I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”
C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable”
C.S. Lewis

“It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.”
C.S. Lewis

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
C.S. Lewis

“No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.”
C.S. Lewis

“Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.”
C.S. Lewis

“Remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”
C.S. Lewis

“Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.”
― C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quote On Tyranny

“If you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
C.S. Lewis

“One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”
C.S. Lewis

“It is not your business to succeed but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God.”
C.S. Lewis

“Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.”
C.S. Lewis

“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”
― C.S. Lewis

“There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.”
C.S. Lewis

“All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
C.S. Lewis

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.”
C.S. Lewis

“We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis Christian Quotes

“The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
C.S. Lewis

“When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’ –or else not.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“No people find each other more absurd than lovers”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
C.S. Lewis

Famous C.S. Lewis Quotes And Sayings On Grief

“We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
C.S. Lewis

“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.”
C.S. Lewis

“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word “love”, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. “Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest “well pleased”.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”
C.S. Lewis

“If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
C.S. Lewis

“Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.”
C.S. Lewis

“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.”
C.S. Lewis

“One always feels better when one has made up one’s mind.”
C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Heaven

“Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.”
C.S. Lewis

“We know nothing of religion here: we only think of Christ.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely”
― C.S. Lewis

“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.”
C.S. Lewis

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
C.S. Lewis

“You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God.”
C.S. Lewis

“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

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” 
– C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Joy

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“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.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“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.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.” 
– C. S. Lewis

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”  
– C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Prayer

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”  
– C. S. Lewis

“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.”
C. S. Lewis

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”  
– C. S. Lewis

“What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects–with their Christianity latent.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one’s own. ”
― C.S. Lewis

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. 
– C. S. Lewis

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  
– C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Loving God

“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“You can make anything by writing.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ”  
– C. S. Lewis

“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man-made, He would have done no less.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”  
– C. S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  
– C. S. Lewis

In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” Friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 
– C. S. Lewis

Did you love these C.S. Lewis quotes?

Even after all these years, people can still love and connect to his books and that says itself how brilliant he really was. His work has covered genres from children’s books to science fiction and has been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies.

C.S. Lewis‘s books have been adapted into many hit movies such as Narnia. Some people love him for his children’s book, some like his imagination to create the world of Narnia, and some like his way of seeing life and faith in God. It does not matter who you are, there is something for you in his work that you can resonate with.

We hope you will love these C.S. Lewis quotes and sayings about love, life, God, and friendship as much as we loved sharing them with you. Do let us know if some of your favorite quotes are missing from our collection. We would love to add more.

Do share your thoughts with us in the comment section and tell us which one was your favorite from all of the C.S. Lewis quotes or if you want to ask any questions or have any queries send them via Contact Us

If you can connect with these C.S. Lewis quotes, subscribe to our blog so that you don’t miss a single post. Get future posts by email, or you can follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. It’s totally FREE.

Read More….