C. S. Lewis Quotes

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

Life is moral responsibility.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.

Duty is a better guide than stars or statutes.

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.

I never condemn wrongdoing in any area.

Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature's God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points--his duty God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.

True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

Morality or duty never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

Duty is whatever opposes inclination.