C. S. Lewis Quotes

If the lives of men can be measured in terms of years, ideologies in decades, and nations in centuries, then the unit measuring civilizations, born of the interaction among peoples, would be the millennium.

Nothing about life is sacred until we make it so.

I enjoy ritual and ceremony. What I don't like is when it's badly done or sloppily done. This is actually a theological issue - the forms we adopt, the actions we take, the way we do things, are, as it were, a sacrament.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Nations cannot endure in sin.

It is at the time of dawn that we must commune with the gods.

The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship - that insight recalibrates the radar for cultural analysis. The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary. Many secular liturgies are trying to get us to love some other kingdom and some other gods.

Civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.

The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future

The advertisements form the most interesting and practical city news. They are the hopes, the thoughts, the joys, the plans, the shames, the losses, the mishaps, the fortunes, the pleasures, the miseries, the politics, and the religion of the people. Each advertiser is therefore a reporter, a sort of penny-a-liner, he paying the penny. What a picture ... one day's advertisements ... presents to mankind!

The dumbest secession movement in the world... the world's most pointless secession movement: They want to leave Canada in order to set up a country that looks exactly the same — confiscatory taxation, moribund health service, no mail service on weekends

Can this new people, so advantageously placed for giving an example to the world of a constitution under which man may enjoy his rights, freely exercise all his faculties, and be governed only by nature, reason and justice — Can they form such a Constitution? — Can they establish it upon a never failing foundation, and guard against every source of division and corruption which may gradually undermine and destroy it? ... It is impossible not to wish ardently that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the world. They may become a model to it. They may prove by fact that men can be free and yet tranquil; and that it is in their power to rescue themselves from the chains in which tyrants and knaves of all descriptions have presumed to bind them under the pretense of the public good. They may exhibit an example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial liberty, and of industry.

We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture?

There are fifty churches in a city and a thousand saloons. The churches are open one day and two or three evenings in each week. The saloons are open every week-day all day long and far into the night.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

All our acts have sacramental possibilities.

Ploutos , no wonder mortals worship you: You are so tolerant of their sins !

Gods are what people worship. Men are what die.

Think not to match yourself against the gods, for men that walk the earth cannot hold their own with the immortals.

Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?

The Gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region...They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men.

There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.

You’ve read about the goddesses, come on. They’re an international sensation. These are my girlfriends. These are the women that I love that have completed the three parts of my heart.

Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.