Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
C.S. Lewis
Archives For November 30, 1999
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
The new oligarchy must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists till in the end the politicians become merely the scientists’ puppets.
C.S. Lewis, “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”
A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat “Do as you would be done by” till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward – driven on from social matters to religious matters
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false,” but as “academic” or “practical,” “outworn” or “contemporary,” “conventional” or “ruthless.” Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism – for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact – just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, fix men’s affections on the future ─ on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past, and love to the present; fear, avarice, and ambition look ahead.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.
C.S. Lewis
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves,” to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be “good.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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.
C.S. Lewis
Acerbity [əˈsɜːbɪtɪ] 