Famous Quotes from C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis quote #373 from The Four Loves

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face absorbed in each other Friends side by side absorbed in some common interest. Above all Eros while it lasts is necessarily between two only. But two far from being the necessary number for Friendship is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third and three by a fourth if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say as the blessed souls say in Dante Here comes one who will augment our loves. For in this love to divide is not to take away.
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C.S. Lewis quote #429 from The Chronicles of Narnia - the Horse and His boy

I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay a child near death so that it came to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you.
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C.S. Lewis quote #473 from The Four Loves

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.
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C.S. Lewis quote #405 from Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

One reason why the Enemy found this so easy was that without knowing it I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion and that for a reason worth recording. By a sheer mistake - and I still believe it to have been an honest mistake - in spiritual technique I had rendered my private practice of that religion a quiet intolerable burden. It came about in this way. Like everyone else I had been told as a child that one must not only say ones prayers but think about what one was saying. Accordingly when I came to a serious belief I tried to put this into practice. At first it seemed plain sailing. But soon the false conscience St. Pauls Law Herberts prattler came into play. One had no sooner reached Amen than it whispered Yes. But are you sure you were really thinking about what you said then more subtly Were you for example thinking about it as well as you did last night The answer for reasons I did not then understand was nearly always No. Very well said the voice hadnt you then better try it over again And one obeyed but of course with no assurance that the second attempt would be any better...I set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a realization by which I meant a certain vivedness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred and which even when it did occur was of very mediocre spiritual value.
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