C. S. Lewis

Novelist, Author

1898 – 1963

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Who was C. S. Lewis?

Clive Staples Lewis, commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University, 1925–1954, and Cambridge University, 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptized in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.

Famous Quotes:

  • It is hard to have patience with people who say There is no death or Death doesn't matter. There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
  • The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.
  • It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere.
  • Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
  • 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.
  • The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
  • I sometimes wander whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
  • Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
  • Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
  • Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.

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Born
Nov 29, 1898
Belfast
Also known as
  • N. W. Clerk
  • Clive Staples Lewis
  • C.S. Lewis
  • LEWIS C.S.
  • Lewis, C.S.
  • Jack
  • Jacksie
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Anglicanism
  • Christianity
Nationality
  • United Kingdom
Profession
Education
  • University College, Oxford
  • Malvern College
  • Campbell College
  • University of Oxford
Lived in
  • Belfast
Died
Nov 22, 1963
Oxford

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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"C. S. Lewis." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/c_s_lewis>.

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