C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewiswas a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He held academic positions at both Oxford University, 1925–54, and Cambridge University, 1954–63. He is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth29 November 1898
CountryIreland
I have always at least, ever since I can remember had a kind of longing for death.
[the difference between the old and the new education being] in a word, the old was a kind of propagation-men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.
You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.
What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those Who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.
Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.
We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.
God is not a static thing...but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.