CS Lewis Quotes part 2

Quotes on Myth:

“The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.” (Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (review))



Quotes on Pain:

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." (The Problem of Pain)


"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." (The Problem of Pain)



Quotes on People:

"There are no ordinary people.” (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)


"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare." (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)



Quotes on Poetry:

“Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.” (A Preface to Paradise Lost)



Quotes on Pleasure and Enjoyment:

"The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction." (Surprised by Joy)


"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmân, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The séroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it." (Out of the Silent Planet)


“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The Weight of Glory)



Quotes on Pride and Self-Righteousness:

"Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger." (The Problem of Pain)



Quotes on Prayer:

“What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.” (Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer)



Quotes on Reading:

“We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it was very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undiserved compliment.” (An Experiment in Criticism)


“The necessary condition of all good reading is ‘to get ourselves out of the way’; we do not help the young to do this by forcing them to keep on expressing opinions.” (An Experiment in Criticism)


“[T]he question ‘What is the good of reading what anyone writes?’ is very like the question ‘What is the good of listening to what anyone says?’ Unless you contain in yourself sources that can supply all the information, entertainmnet, advice, rebuke and merriment you want, the answer is obvious. And if it is worth while listening or reading at all, it is often worth doing so attentively. Indeed we must attend even to discover that something is not worth attention.” (An Experiment in Criticism)


“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.” (An Experiment in Criticism)


“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.” (An Experiment in Criticism)



Quotes on Rules:

“‘Rotten?’ said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. ‘Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I'm sure, and I'm very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys -- and servants -- and women -- and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.’
As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle's face the moment before Polly had vanished: and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew's grand words. ‘All it means,’ he thought to himself, ‘is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.’” (The Magician’s Nephew)



Quotes on Sin:

"We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin." (The Problem of Pain)





Source :  http://cslewisjrrtolkien.classicalautographs.com/cslewis/quotes.html