C.S. Lewis

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal."

"To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

"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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you."

"“If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.”"

"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."

"“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone. You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it.”"

"“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”"

"“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”"

"“It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”"

"“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”"

"“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”"

"“For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”"

"“The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.”"

"When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

"While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best."

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me."