"C.S." Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898-November 22, 1963) was an author, historian and professor at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
He was educated by a private tutor as a child; studied at Malvern College in England; University College, Oxford, 1916; served in World War I, 1918; taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925-54; and was professor of medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, 1954-63.
Though his death went almost unnoticed, having died on the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his works have become some of the most widely read in English literature. His works include: The Pilgrim's Regress, 1933; The Allegory of Love-a Study in Medieval Tradition, 1936; Out of the Silent Planet, 1938; The Problem of Pain, 1940; The Screwtape Letters, 1942; Perelandra, 1943; That Hideous Strength, 1945; Miracles, 1947; The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950; and Mere Christianity, 1952; and his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, 1955.
On May 11, 1926, C.S. Lewis met a Catholic colleague at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien, who witnessed Christianity to him. He was also influenced by G.K. Chesterton's book, The Everlasting Man. In Surprised by Joy, 1955, C.S. Lewis described how he resisted "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape," until in 1929 he came to believe in God:
<You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.> 1898CS101
In 1931, after a late-night discussion with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, C.S. Lewis converted to Christianity. He wrote in Surprised by Joy:
<I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached to zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. "Emotional" is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake. And it was, like that moment on top of the bus, ambiguous.
Freedom, or necessity? Or do they differ at their maximum? At that maximum a man is what he does; there is nothing of him left over or outside the act. As for what we commonly call Will, and what we commonly call Emotion, I fancy these usually talk too loud, protest too much, to be quite believed, and we have a secret suspicion that the great passion or the iron resolution is partly a put-up job.
They have spoiled Whipsnade since then. Wallaby Wood, with the birds singing overhead and the blue-bells underfoot and the Wallabies hopping all round one, was almost Eden come again.> 1898CS001
Having once been an agnostic, C.S. Lewis expressed in Mere Christianity:
<I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.'
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.> 1898CS002
In The Screwtape Letters, 1942, C.S. Lewis wrote:
<The safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.> 1898CS003
In Mere Christianity, 1952, C.S. Lewis wrote:
<The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus in a woman's body.> 1898CS004
C.S. Lewis remarked:
<God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.> 1898CS005
<Christianity...is a religion you could not have guessed...It is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.> 1898CS006
<Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.> 1898CS007
<Good people know about both good and evil; bad people do not know about either.> 1898CS008
<There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."> 1898CS009
<Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.> 1898CS010
C.S. Lewis stated (The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944. pp. 154-165):
<If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science.
If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test.
This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience.
The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions.
The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. 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.> 1898CS011
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
1898CS001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, 1955, in his autobiography Surprise by Joy. "Supplement: More Firsthand History, C.S. Lewis, Christian History Newsletter, Christian History Society, p. 4.
1898CS002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Philip Schaff, The Person of Jesus (New York: American Tract Society), p. 40. Willard Cantelon, New Money or None? (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1979), p. 243.
1898CS003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, 1942, in his work, The Screwtape Letters. Carroll E. Simcox, comp., 4400 Quotations for Christian Communicators (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), p. 190. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 842.
1898CS004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, 1952, in his work titled, Mere Christianity. Carroll E. Simcox, comp., 4400 Quotations for Christian Communicators (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), p. 207.
1898CS005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, Statement. Bless Your Heart (series II) (Eden Prairie, MN: Heartland Samplers, Inc., 1990), 1.18.
1898CS006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Perry Tanksley, To Love is to Give (Jackson, Mississippi: Allgood Books, Box 1329; Parthenon Press, 201 8th Ave., South, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972), p. 27.
1898CS007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Perry Tanksley, To Love is to Give (Jackson, Mississippi: Allgood Books, Box 1329; Parthenon Press, 201 8th Ave., South, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972), p. 35.
1898CS008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Perry Tanksley, To Love is to Give (Jackson, Mississippi: Allgood Books, Box 1329; Parthenon Press, 201 8th Ave., South, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972), p. 39.
1898CS009. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Perry Tanksley, To Love is to Give (Jackson, Mississippi: Allgood Books, Box 1329; Parthenon Press, 201 8th Ave., South, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972), p. 72.
1898CS010. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Carroll E. Simcox, 3000 Quotations on Christian Themes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House 1989), p. 165.
1898CS011. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). "C.S." Clive Staples Lewis, statement. Gary DeMar, "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (Atlanta, GA: Biblical Worldview, American Vision, 10 Perimeter Way, Suite B-175, Atlanta, Georgia, 30339, May 1996), Vol. 12, No. 5, p. 2.