There are several C.S. Lewis pages on Facebook, including the official page run by HarperOne Publishers. There used to be an unofficial page that was run by a Mormon girl who subsequently went on her mission, but I can't find it, which means that either Facebook is screwy (always a possibility), or the page was discontinued. Regardless, Lewis is extremely quotable. Over the years, I've accumulated a number of quotes from Lewis that I really like, and I figured I'd share them.
Having said that he was an Atheist, I hasten to add that he was a "Rationalist" of the old, high and dry nineteenth-century type. For Atheism has come down in the world since those days, and mixed itself with politics and learned to dabble in dirt. The anonymous donor who now sends me anti-God magazines hopes, no doubt, to hurt the Christian in me; he really hurts the ex-Atheist. I am ashamed that my old mates and (which matters much more) Kirk's old mates should have sunk to what they are now. It was different then; even McCabe wrote like a man. At the time when I knew him, the fuel of Kirk's Atheism was chiefly of the anthropological and pessimistic kind. He was great on The Golden Bough and Shopenhauer.I found this passage quite interesting. I've had numerous philosophical discussions with atheists over the years - rarely, if ever, with the intent to convince them of my own beliefs. Those discussions tend to be the same thing over again. Seldom am I left feeling skeptical about my own beliefs, nor am I usually convinced that they're merely skeptics whose objective appraisal of the available evidence leaves them unconvinced of the existence of a deity. Instead, most of the atheists I've discussed philosophy with seem bitter, cynical, and sententious, with beliefs based largely on emotions, rather than a lack of sufficient evidence to convince them. I realize that there are plenty of folks out there who are either open-minded, ambivalent, or apathetic about faith, and that's part of what's beautiful about Western society - that we're all granted the freedom to come to our own conclusions about faith, or ignore it entirely. My logical, scientific mind wants to sympathize with the skeptics; but with experiences like those Lewis describes, it's pretty tough to do so.
- Surprised by Joy
All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no "swank" or "side," no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience-obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies." (emphasis added)I love this passage, for a variety of reasons. I don't necessarily agree with Lewis' assumption that such a society would be "Leftist"; in fact, most of these strike me as entirely conservative values. For example, I think that society providing for those in need is an entirely different matter than government providing for those in need, the latter case being quite prone to abuse by, as Lewis calls them, "passengers or parasites". The idea that one's livelihood ought to be tied to their ability to provide for themself is an entirely conservative value, contrary to the idea of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as espoused by Karl Marx. I also get really sick of the manufacture of useless stuff, and the constant barrage of advertisements aimed at convincing people of their need to own the stuff. I also find that my faith has led me to both question and respect authority, even when respecting authority seems completely counterintuitive. It's just a great passage.
- Mere Christianity
He then translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius' Lexicon and, having told me to go through again as much as I could of what he had done, left the room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked. At first I could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but every day I could travel further. Presently I could travel the whole way. Then I could go a line or two beyond his furthest North. Then it became a kind of game to see how far beyond. He appeared at this stage to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a greal deal without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very formula, "Naus means a ship," is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.Lewis describes Herodotus as a "gossipy, formless book which can be opened anywhere", with which I wholeheartedly agree. Herodotus was a Greek historian whose work we were supposed to have read when I was in college, and I read parts of it. He wrote about the Persian Wars and other stories and descriptions from the eastern Med (to include an entire portion about Egypt and an entire portion about Lydia), and his writing is sort of... Unprofessional? Herodotus was fond of relating stories that were interesting, but could not be independently verified; and he said things like "and his name I know but will not make mention of it", basically deliberately leaving out one detail or another. Lewis actually wrote a "lost chapter of Herodotus" in which he describes the people of "Niatirb" ("Britain" spelled backward) and discussed the differing traditions of "Exmas and Christmas". (For my money, Thucydides is better than Herodotus; both are the subject of this charming webcomic.)
- Surprised by Joy
Kirk did not, of course, make me read nothing but Homer. The Two Great Bores (Demosthenes and Cicero) could not be avoided. There were (oh glory!) Lucretius, Catullus, Tacitus, Herodotus.He also goes on to note that he never read a single line of Caesar, which tends to be a seminal text in Latin literature due to its literary simplicity (no doubt intended by Caesar to make his propaganda dispatches accessible to the rank and file Roman citizenry whose political support he was seeking through their publication during the course of his foreign campaigns). That said, I hold Tacitus in the same esteem as him. I'm also amused by his disdain for Cicero. I actually received, as a college graduation gift from my friend Super Dave, a copy of Cicero's Orations, in Latin, that's more than a century old. I haven't read it (I know very little Latin, only a few words really), but Cicero was a political opponent of Caesar's, and I took exception with some of his policy stances when studying him in school. I just checked Wikipedia, and it reiterates my memory from HST 322: upon his assassination by two soldiers loyal to Marc Antony (against whom he had written scathing essays), his head was put on the rostra in the Senate, as were his hands in retaliation for having written the offending items in the first place.
So, those are my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes. Up next: Wilfred Thesiger.
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