C. S. Lewis Quotes

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

The thing that is most interesting about people is the way they are when no one is looking at them or the way they are when they are in private.

You can never be sure of anyone until you're close enough to see them clearly.

The truth is, you can never really know a man until you've loaned him money. And you can never know a woman until you've slept in her bed.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

Let me ask you a question Alex. What do you think is the greatest evil on this plant today?" "Is that including, or not including you?

As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.

The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

You'll see. She can be nice sometimes.

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.

When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings.

There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.

There is a variety in tempers of good men.

The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.

I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?

Try as one may, it is impossible to deny one's nature

A respectable person is invariably unrespectable within.

You can never trust a human being to behave as you would have expected in a given circumstance

Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them.

I got a parking ticket one time in L.A. and I was furious about it. I was trying to prove a point to the guy who gave it to me and I put it in my mouth and chewed it up. And the guy just kept watching me, like, "Yeah?" He didn't think I was going to finish the job. So then I swallowed it. The good news is that paper is not a big deal if you eat it.You'd be full, but you could eat the phone book. So that was the weirdest thing: a parking ticket.

Show me what a man hates and I'll show you what he is.

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.

Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.