C.S. Lewis

1898–1963 · Irish-born British literary scholar, novelist and Christian apologist

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898 and spent his working life teaching English literature: nearly thirty years as a fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, then the new chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge from 1954 until his death in 1963. He wrote in three registers at once — scholarship (The Allegory of Love), children’s fiction (The Chronicles of Narnia) and popular theology (Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters) — and was a central member of the Inklings, the Oxford writing circle that also gave Tolkien his first readers. The Four Loves, from 1960, is his late attempt to say precisely what people mean by the word love.

Traced to source

7 quotes we’ve traced to C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . .”

Verified

“There are two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'Thy will be done.'”

Verified

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words”

Disputed

“Comparison is the thief of joy”

Disputed

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”

Disputed

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less”

Disputed

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions”

Disputed

Not actually C.S. Lewis

Often misattributed to C.S. Lewis

Famous lines widely pinned on C.S. Lewis that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words”

actually Unknown

“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work”

actually Dr. John Trainer

“Comparison is the thief of joy”

actually Unknown — an anonymous modern aphorism

“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn”

actually William Nicholson

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny”

actually Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely and Michael Petroni

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less”

actually Rick Howard & Jamie Lash

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching”

actually Charles Marshall

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions”

Unknown — credited to C.S. Lewis, who did not write it

“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream”

actually Les Brown

“You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”

actually James R. Sherman

“You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body”

actually George MacDonald

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