CS Lewis is freaking amazing

For your reading pleasure, a list of all the brilliant things to have come out of the mouth/mind/pen of Clive Staples Lewis:


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.



A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.



Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.



Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.


Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.



Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.



Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.


Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.


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.



Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.



Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.



Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.



The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.




There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."



The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.



Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.



You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.