Frases de Clive Staples Lewis

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“El dolor, la injusticia y el error son tres tipos de males con una curiosa diferencia: la injusticia y el error pueden ser ignorados por el que vive dentro de ellos, mientras que el dolor, en cambio, no puede ser ignorado, es un mal desenmascarado, inequívoco: toda persona sabe que algo anda mal cuando ella sufre. Y es que Dios nos habla por medio de la conciencia, y nos grita por medio de nuestros dolores.”

“Cuando hayas alcanzado tu propia habitación, sé amable con los que han escogido puertas distintas y con aquéllos que aún están en el pasillo. Si están equivocados, necesitan tus oraciones; y si son tus enemigos, estás bajo órdenes para rezar por ellos. Es una de las normas comunes a toda la casa.”

“Mi argumento en contra de Dios fue que el universo parecía ser muy cruel e injusto. ¿Pero cómo conseguí esa idea de justo e injusto? Un hombre no puede llamar una línea torcida a menos que no tenga alguna idea de una línea recta.¿Con qué estaba comparando este universo cuando lo llamaba injusto?”

“Si te estás acercando a Él no como la meta sino como un camino, no como el fin sino como un medio, en realidad no te estás acercando a Él en absoluto.”

“¿Con que estoy comparando este universo cuando lo llamo injusto?”

“Mi argumento contra Dios era que el universo parecia tan cruel e injusto”

“Tú averiguarás más de Dios por la ley moral del universo en general”

“Usted puede encerrarle por loco, puede escupirle y darle muerte como si fuera un demonio; o puede postrarse a sus pies y llamarle Señor y Dios. Pero no nos presentamos con la necedad de una arrogante condescendencia acerca de que él es un gran maestro humano. El no nos ha dejado abierta esa posibilidad. Ni siquiera lo intentó.”

“Los cristianos que más hicieron por el mundo presente fueron precisamente aquellos que pensaron más en el venidero. Fue a partir de que los cristianos comenzaron a pensar menos en el otro mundo que se hicieron más ineficaces en éste. Apunta al cielo y también le darás a la tierra; apunta a la tierra y no le darás a ninguno.”

“Los críticos que tratan lo adulto como un término de aprobación, en lugar de como un término meramente descriptivo, no pueden ser adultos en sí mismos. Estar preocupado por ser adulto, admirar la madurez porque es madurez, sonrojarse ante la sospecha de ser infantil; esas cosas son las señas de la niñez y de la adolescencia. Y en la niñez y en la adolescencia son, en moderación, síntomas saludables. Las cosas jóvenes deberían querer crecer. Pero para continuar hacia la mitad de la vida o incluso a la edad adulta temprana esta preocupación sobre ser adulto es una marca de un desarrollo realmente detenido. Cuando tenía diez años, leía cuentos de hadas en secreto y me habría avergonzado si me hubieran encontrado haciendo eso. Ahora que tengo cincuenta las leo abiertamente. Cuando fui un hombre dejé atrás las cosas infantiles, incluyendo el miedo a la puerilidad y el deseo de ser más mayor.”

“Ahora, hoy, este momento, es nuestra oportunidad de elegir el lado correcto.”

“Al afecto se debe el noventa por ciento de toda felicidad sólida y duradera.”

“La humildad perfecta prescinde de la modestia.”

“Creo en el cristianismo como creo que el Sol ha salido. No sólo porque lo vea sino porque gracias a eso puedo ver todo lo demás.”

“Todavía hay esperanza, cuando nos enfrentamos sin prejuicios a un problema sin solucionar. Sin embargo, no hay esperanza si actuamos como si el problema no existiese.”

“Aquí es donde los sueños, sueños, entiendes, cobran vida, se hacen realidad. No ensoñaciónes: sueños.”

“Me volví mía solo cuando me entregué a Otro.”

“¿Quién eres tú? Nadie. Quien es Gachas? LA PERSONA MÁS IMPORTANTE QUE HAY.”

“The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. … the sight of the Island and the sounds became very rare … and the yearning for the sight … became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. … it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling-for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?–by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind.”

“A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. It will always work, on those who can receive it, the same catharsis.”

“The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

“"Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?"
"Hush," he said sternly. "Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind — ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind — is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly."”

“I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.”

“A man, an adult, is precisely what [Aeneas] is: Achilles had been little more than a passionate boy.”

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.”

“I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.”

“There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.”

“For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.”

“We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.”

“If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.”

“But supposing one tries to live by Pantheistic philosophy? Does it lead to a complacent Hegelian optimism?”

“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question "What if this present were the world's last night?"”

“Mr. Neo-Angular – I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling. Vertue – I know that a rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.”

“The process of being brought up, however well it is done, cannot fail to offend.”

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

“The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?”

“If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.”

“Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”

“The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything… Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one… How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.”

“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

“The Guide sang: Nearly they stood who fall; Themselves as they look back See always in the track The one false step, where all Even yet, by lightest swerve Of foot not yet enslaved, By smallest tremor of the smallest nerve, Might have been saved. Nearly they fell who stand, And with cold after fear Look back to mark how near They grazed the Siren’s land, Wondering that subtle fate, By threads so spidery fine, The choice of ways so small, the event so great, Should thus entwine. Therefore oh, man, have fear Lest oldest fears be true, Lest thou too far pursue The road that seems so clear, And step, secure, a hair-breadth bourne, Which, being once crossed forever unawares, Denies return.”

“We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them.”

“This is where dreams—dreams, do you understand—come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.”

“The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.”

“"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where?' they say, 'in there, of course.'”

“Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.”

“When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”