Today is the feast of C.S. Lewis and the 50th anniversary of his death. Here are some quotes of his to reflect upon:
“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.”
“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
“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.”
“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
“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.”
“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...”
“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.”
“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”
“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.”
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
“We meet no ordinary people in our lives.”
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
“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.”
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
“Nothing is yet in its true form.”