“The Screwtape Letters” quotes by C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis, a beacon of Christian intellectualism in the 20th century, illuminated the corridors of faith with a brilliance that few could match. His journey from atheism to Christianity is a testament to the transformative power of divine truth.
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Lewis, with his profound insights and unparalleled eloquence, bridged the chasm between reason and faith, making the profound mysteries of Christianity accessible and relatable to the modern mind. His works, from the allegorical tales of Narnia to the deeply introspective “Screwtape Letters,” have not only enriched Christian literature but have also provided seekers and believers alike with a robust intellectual foundation for their faith.
About The Screwtape Letters
“The Screwtape Letters” is a Christian apologetic novel written by C.S. Lewis. It is composed of a series of letters written by a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter. The letters provide advice on how to tempt a human, referred to as “the Patient,” away from God (whom Screwtape refers to as “the Enemy”) and towards sin.
Throughout the letters, Lewis delves into human nature, Christian doctrine, and the tactics of temptation, offering insights into the spiritual struggles faced by believers. The book is both humorous and deeply thought-provoking, providing a unique perspective on the spiritual warfare that rages in the hearts and minds of individuals.
It’s one of the most memorable C.S. Lewis works and is highly regarded by Christian theologians and C.S. Lewis fans.
“The Screwtape Letters” Quotes
“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Suspicion often creates what it suspects.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Whatever their bodies do affects their souls.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become harmful: not because it is pleasure, but because it leads to greedily increasing the dose.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“People are daily told that they ought to love themselves; that their main duty is to themselves; that so long as they are ‘sincere’ they are justified.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Now, this is a ticklish business. We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Leave them to discuss whether ‘Love’, or patriotism, or celibacy, or candles on altars, or teetotalism, or education, are ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Can’t you see there’s no answer?” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact?” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Since it is through the human that we catch the human, it is, in general, a good rule that the young and inexperienced should be attached to the old and experienced, so that they may be decieved by their wisdom and learn to profit by their folly.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist turn.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“To be in time means to change.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the enemy wants him to be a pupil.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The historical Jesus then, however dangerous he may seem to be to us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go,
“How valuable time is to us my be gauged by the fact that the enemy allows so little of it to each of us.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual ‘taste’. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses, and advertisers who determine the fashionable type.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The truth is that the enemy having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danges of feeling at home anywhere else.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“That thing which I greatly fear has come upon me. That thing that I was greatly afraid of has come unto me.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancemenet, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Nothing remains but to pick up the very few, mature humans who have escaped this initial corruption and to smuggle them into the Kingdom. And even there, we have a fine time making them hauntingly aware of their natural infirmities.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact?” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Suspicion often creates what it suspects.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become harmful: not because it is pleasure, but because it leads to greedily increasing the dose.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
“An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Closing Thoughts on the Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Screwtape Letters’ stands as a testament to the profound insights and timeless wisdom of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated authors. As you can see, the book is replete with quotes that resonate, challenge, and inspire readers across generations.
These pearls of wisdom, both haunting and enlightening, serve as a reminder of Lewis’ unparalleled ability to capture the essence of the human experience in words. As I reflect on the many memorable lines from ‘The Screwtape Letters,’ I am once again reminded of the enduring power of literature by the greatest authors like C.S. Lewis.