C.S. Lewis’s book ‘The Four Loves’ analyzes the nature of love from a Religious and philosophical standpoint via thought experiments.
The book examines four types of human love: affection, friendship, romantic love (eros) and charity.
Each sort of love has its own chapter, in which Lewis explains its nature and qualities in more detail.
The book also delves into the opportunities and issues that come with each sort of love.
Here are some great quotes from The Four Loves novel.
Table of Contents
The Four Loves Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, “Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
Other Book Quotes: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Quotes by Matthew Woodring Stover and Letters to Milena Quotes by Franz Kafka
Best The Four Loves Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines and angles.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, “Do you care about the same truth?” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
Quotes from The Four Loves
“Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“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.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Eros, honoured without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
Famous The Four Loves Quotes
“It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
Top The Four Loves Quotes by C.S. Lewis
“If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Nothing in Man is either worse or better for being shared with the beasts.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one!” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” ~ C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).
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