205 quotes
"Their own strength has betrayed them. They have . . . pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads."
That Hideous Strength (1945)
It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1963)
I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is — what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course.
God in the Dock (1970)
As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1949)
And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.
The World's Last Night (1952)
John – I'm trying to find the Island in the West. Sensible – You refer, no doubt to some aesthetic experience.
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)
Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear.
The Screwtape Letters (1942)
To love at all is to be vulnerable. . . . The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
Mere Christianity (1952)
It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
A Grief Observed (1961)
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells to 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.
The Great Divorce (1944)
"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery."
The Great Divorce (1944)
The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?
Surprised by Joy (1955)
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?
Mere Christianity (1952)
Looking for God — or Heaven — by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950)
I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.
Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.
Equality (1943)
It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as 'feminine'.
A Grief Observed (1961)