C. S. Lewis Quotes

Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three- piece suit.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

… perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

The people who talk the most about God are people who are the least like God.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest.

Many pass for saints on earth whose souls are in hell.

A bad man becomes worse when he apes a saint.

Of all things in the world that stink in the nostrils of men, hypocrisy is the worst.

Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity.

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.

Joseph is the wearisomest and self-righteous Pharisee who ever ransacked the Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on his neighbor.

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

You carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment.

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad.