C.S. Lewis Quotes

       C.S. Lewis
       1898-1963
      
       Clive Staples Lewis was born in Ireland, in Belfast on 29 November 1898. His mother was a devout Christian and made efforts to influence his beliefs. When she died in his early youth her influence waned and Lewis was subject to the musings and mutterings of his friends who were decidedly agnostic and atheistic. It would not be until later, in a moment of clear rationality that he first came to a belief in God and later became a Christian.
      
       C. S. Lewis volunteered for the army in 1917 and was wounded in the trenches in World War I. After the war, he attended university at Oxford. Soon, he found himself on the faculty of Magdalen College where he taught Mediaeval and Renaissance English.
      
       Throughout his academic career he wrote clearly on the topic of religion. His most famous works include the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia. The atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge tended to skepticism. Lewis used this skepticism as a foil. He intelligently saw Christianity as a necessary fact that could be seen clearly in science.
      
       "Surprised by Joy" is Lewis's autobiography chronicling his reluctant conversion from atheism to Christianity in 1931.
      

The modern idea of a Great Man is one who stands at the lonely extremity of some single line of development--     Topics: Achievement, Perseverance     Source: A Preface to Paradise Lost The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.     Topics: Adultery, Marriage All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery.     Topics: Adultery, Crime Conquest is an evil productive of almost every other evil both to those who commit and to those who suffer it.     Topics: Adversity     Source: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.     Topics: Animals     Source: Mere Christianity The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.     Topics: Animals We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.     Topics: Apathy     Source: The Problem of Pain Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.     Topics: Apathy     Source: Letters to Malcolm Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.     Topics: Apathy, Greed If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?     Topics: Atheism     Source: Encounter with Light 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.     Topics: Atheism     Source: Mere Christianity If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. It cuts its own throat.     Topics: Atheism     Source: A Christian Reply to Professor Price