C. S. Lewis Quotes

[The devil] al­ways sends er­rors into the world in pairs—pairs of op­posites. And he al­ways en­cour­ages us to spend a lot of time think­ing about which is the worse.... He re­lies on your ex­tra dis­like of the one er­ror to draw you grad­u­ally into the op­po­site one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through be­tween both er­rors. We have no other con­cern than that with ei­ther of them.

Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

You can't have bad without good. You can't have right without wrong. You can't have fantastic without mundane. You need to experience all that to really earn the title of the film, 'Fantastic Four.'

One thing about being a great ball handler is not looking at the basketball.

In my experience, it's common that deep truths exist at both extremes of a dialectic, and the wisest stance on an issue will incorporate 'both of the opposites within itself.'

Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when the dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Satan's aim is to destroy our joy and trust and delight in God, and to make God look worthless in the world's eyes. Everytime someone forsakes God for the world, gets angry at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable... and everytime someone stays with God, when the world is taken away, and praises God, they highlight the value and glory of God.

The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow.

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?

If [Barack] Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is.

You two are a strange pair. You are a pair, aren't you?" "We're in training.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road.

If I were Satan and my ultimate goal was to thwart God's kingdom and purposes, one of my main strategies would be to get churchgoers to ignore the Holy Spirit.

Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear.

In excess, most endeavors and possessions take on the characteristics of their opposite.

Perfect good sense shuns all extremity, content to couple wisdom with sobriety.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.

We know broadly from research is that religiosity does not correlate with sympathy for terrorism. It's actually quite the opposite. The more religious someone is, the more often they go to the mosque, the more likely they are to actually reject attacks on civilians.

When we try to avoid one fault, we are led to the opposite, unless we be very careful.

Temptations are like tramps. Treat them kindly, and they will return bringing others with them. Temptations are never so dangerous as when they come to us in a religious garb.