C. S. Lewis Quotes about Imagination

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For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.

For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.

C. S. Lewis

Imagination, Causes, Reason

C. S. Lewis (2013). “Selected Literary Essays”, p.265, Cambridge University Press

As to...old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off.

C. S. Lewis

Art, Thinking, Imagination

No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.

C. S. Lewis

Divorce, Orange, Imagination

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

C. S. Lewis

Order, Imagination, Literature

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.

C. S. Lewis

Blow, House Of Cards, Imagination

C.S. Lewis (2014). “A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely”, p.21, Faber & Faber

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.

C. S. Lewis

Heart, Imagination, Heaven

C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.314, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No one can say 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound' for I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable. If any man is safe from the danger of under-estimating this adversary, I am that man.

C. S. Lewis

Pain, Men, Imagination

C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Problem of Pain”, p.12, Harper Collins

The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.

C. S. Lewis

Imagination, Suggestions, Hints

C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt