C. S. Lewis Quotes

Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?

O Master, make me chaste, but not yet!

I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.

Saintliness is also a temptation.

I do a great wrong in His sight, when I beseech Him that He will hear my prayer, which as I give utterance to it, I do not hear myself. I entreat Him that He will think of me; but I regard neither myself nor Him. Nay, what is worse, turning over corrupt and evil thoughts in mine heart, I thrust a dreadful offensiveness into His presence.

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

We are never like angels till our passion dies.

Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.

The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner.

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.

The whole mystery of temptation is to have sins suggested to us, and to be swept after them by a sudden enthusiasm, which sometimes feels as strong as the Spirit of God ever made in us the enthusiasm for virtue.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

The better day, the worse deed.

The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.

I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God recognizes I will do this and forgives me.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.