Inspiring Quotes by C.S. Lewis for Living a Meaningful Life

Scholar and author C.S. Lewis, who lived 1898–1963, was a fellow of Magdalen College at both Oxford and Cambridge. Ardent atheist who became a passionate and intellectual Christian, he wrote more than 30 books, including the immensely popular Chronicles of Narnia series.

C.S. Lewis “very effectively champions objective truth, goodness, natural law, literary excellence, reason, science, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and Christian apologetics,” according to The Independent Institute. “His work captures a grandeur, precision, wit, imagination and insight seldom matched by others, and in the process, he articulately critiques the materialism, reductionism, scientism, collectivism, nihilism, statism, and de-humanization of the modern era.”

“If Christians are to be about bringing God’s kingdom values to our world, then Lewis helps us consider just how to do that,” writes Dr. Robin Baker, president of George Fox University, in his article, Why C.S. Lewis Plays a Prominent Role in My Intellectual Life.

What follows is a collection of quotes by C.S. Lewis, each taken from his book listed next to it, that are especially insightful in helping us live a SemperVerus life:

⇨   “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.” Is Theology Poetry?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The Reality of God is Plain Enough ]

⇨   “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Fact: Jesus Rose from the Dead ]

⇨   “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.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: Spiritual Self-Defense ]

⇨   “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Inspirational Quotes on Courage ]

⇨   “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.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Too Little Faith to Be an Atheist ]

⇨   “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Spiritual Fitness: Top 12 Acts for a Christian ]

⇨   “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Pray the Prayers of the Apostle Paul ]

⇨   “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Essay On Forgiveness in the book, Weight of Glory

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Forgiving vs Forgetting ]

⇨   “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” The Problem of Pain

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The Nicene Creed Still Compelling After 1700 Years ]

⇨   “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Expanded Observations on The Lord’s Prayer ]

⇨   “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.” The Four Loves

[ Read the SemperVerus article, 100 Essential Bible Passages to Know ]

⇨   “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The Road to Character ]

⇨   “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” The Problem of Pain

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Every Small Decision Leads to Winning or Losing in Spiritual Warfare ]

⇨   “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.” The Problem of Pain

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The Sixth Sense of Being ]

⇨   “In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” The Four Loves

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Why We Shouldn’t Just ‘Do Something’ ]

⇨   “The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.” Mere Christianity

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Bible Verses to Overcome Fear and Gain Courage ]

⇨   “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Paul Harvey: If I Were the Devil ]

Also See These Sources:

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