Within the vast realm of spiritual literature, "Mere Christianity Quotes" hold a distinctive and enduring place. Penned by the renowned author and theologian C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity" is a compelling exploration of the Christian faith and its enduring principles. Beyond its religious context, the book offers profound insights into the human condition and the moral fabric that weaves us together.
As we delve into the world of "Mere Christianity quotes," we embark on a journey of reflection, wisdom, and philosophical depth that transcends denominational boundaries, inviting readers to contemplate the profound ideas that have inspired generations.
Mere Christianity Quotes (2024)
C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" is a seminal work that has profoundly influenced the world of Christian apologetics and spiritual reflection. Within its pages lies a treasure trove of thought-provoking insights, philosophical musings, and timeless wisdom. In this compilation, we present unique and impactful quotes from "Mere Christianity" that delve into matters of faith, morality, human nature, and the essence of Christian belief:
"Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."
"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."
"A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."
"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
"The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become."
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say."
"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."
"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good."
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie."
"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ."
"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."
"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."
"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."
"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."
"The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ-self, and this is done by God's grace and your own will."
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
"There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him."
"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain."
"The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not."
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
"There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan."
"To walk out of His will is to walk into nowhere."
"If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them."
"The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."
"We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us."
"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."
"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are."
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
"In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it."
"God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want."
"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable."
"We are what we believe we are."
"The very moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day."
"God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right."
"I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him."
"You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God."
"We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies, but he hopes he'll never have to use it."
"The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important."
"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."
"The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.'"
"Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror."
"Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."
"The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it."
"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness."
"The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day."
"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides."
"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did."
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell."
"Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine."
"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods."
"The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said."
"A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian."
"The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance."
"What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it."
"A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers—including even his power to revolt."
"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career."
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."
"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
"God does not love us because we are lovable, or because we are good, or because He can see some good thing in us that we can't. God loves us just because He has chosen to do so."
"It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence."
"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"
"I gave in, and admitted that God was God."
"You are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body."
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"
"The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become."
"When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."
"I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait."
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'"
"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer."
"If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself."
"Give yourself up, and you will find your real self."
"If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad."
"The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be."
"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all."
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell."
"We must lay before Him what is in us; not what ought to be in us."
"The eternal being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman's body."
"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."
"The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not."
"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him."
"I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond."
"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.'"
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
"It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to."
In the culmination of our journey through the profound world of C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity Quotes," we find ourselves enriched by the timeless wisdom and insights these quotations offer. As we have explored the depths of faith, morality, and the human condition, it becomes evident that the significance of these words extends far beyond religious confines.
"Mere Christianity Quotes" serve as beacons of ethical guidance, prompting us to ponder the values that bind us as a collective humanity, transcending the boundaries of creed and doctrine.
