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Depending on what you know about C.S. Lewis, you may be surprised that we are making a list of C.S. Lewis grief quotes. After all, you may associate C.S. Lewis with his famous Chronicles of Narnia series, which has been popular with children for decades.
Jump ahead to these sections:
- C.S. Lewis Quotes About Death
- C.S. Lewis Quotes About Grief
- C.S. Lewis Quotes to Share at a Funeral or Memorial Service
But some may not know that C.S. Lewis was a prolific writer known for being one of the most influential Christian apologists of all time.
Many of the quotes about death, pain, and grief that we allude to in this blog come from a piece he wrote following the death of his wife called A Grief Observed. While you certainly may appreciate the quotes we pulled from Lewis’ work, we encourage you to read the entire book – especially if you recently lost your spouse.
C.S. Lewis Quotes About Death
A Grief Observed is often listed as one of the best books about death and dying. Although it is told from a Christian’s perspective, believers and non-believers will appreciate this candid discussion of grief and loss.
1. “The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
This famous quote from A Grief Observed resonates with readers – especially when the death refers to a spouse or partner.
2, “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.”
Unfortunately, this quote doesn’t provide clear advice on how to help someone who is grieving. However, it might resonate with you if you are the person suffering.
3. “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment.”? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
You aren’t alone if you periodically feel a “vast emptiness” followed by a short reprieve.
4. “It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And it matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.”
Fellow believers may attempt to make a person in mourning feel better by talking about the afterlife.
C.S. Lewis Quotes About Grief
Grief is a great unifier. We will all experience the loss of someone we love at some point in our lives. Here are some of Lewis’ thoughts about death and grief that you may appreciate if you have recently lost someone you love.
5. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.”
These are the beginning lines of A Grief Observed. Most quote books stop at the first line. However, we think that the rest of the paragraph offers a valuable explanation.
6. “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
You know from other readings that the stages of grief don’t go in a particular order. We like how Lewis describes grief as a “winding valley.”
7. “At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
This is the second paragraph of A Grief Observed.
8. “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
Lewis refers to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:4 in this quote.
9. “I once read the sentence ‘I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache and about lying awake.’ That’s true to life. 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.”
Lewis’s wife died from cancer after the couple had been married for three years.
10. “It’s not true that I’m always thinking of H. Work and conversation make that impossible. But the times when I’m not are perhaps my worst. For then, though I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, or something amiss.”
Sometimes people describe life after a traumatic experience as a “new normal.”
11. “This is one of the things I’m afraid of. The agonies, the mad midnight moments, must in the course of nature, die away. But what will follow? Just this apathy, this dead flatness? Will there come a time when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street, because I shall take the squalor as normal? Does grief finally subside into boredom tinged by faint nausea?”
Readers often appreciate Lewis’ candor when discussing grief.
12. “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
C.S. Lewis published A Grief Observed in 1961 using the pseudonym NW Clerk.
C.S. Lewis Quotes to Share at a Funeral or Memorial Service
Many people select poems to share at their loved one’s funeral. Those poems are often shared to provide comfort and speak of the promise of the afterlife. However, sometimes a family member will select a poem that describes their grief.
C.S. Lewis published two poetry books – Spirits in Bondage and Dymer. You may consider using one of his pieces at your loved one’s funeral – or a favorite quote from one of his books.
13. “For the greater the love the greater the grief, and the stronger the faith the more savagely will Satan storm its fortress.”
A Grief Observed is a candid account of loss and grief. While many of what you read in the book may ring true, many thoughts are atypical of what is shared at a funeral service.
14. “I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them.”
According to Jesus, the two greatest commandments are “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
15. “Her absence is like the sky spread over everything.”
This isn’t a happy thought. However, it does perhaps describe how you feel about your loss.
16. “How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, ‘I am at peace with God.’ She smiled, but not at me. “Poi si torno all’ eterna fontana.”
This is the final paragraph of A Grief Observed. The last lines are Dante’s and translate to “And then she returned to the Eternal Fount.”
17. “We’re like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering in the world is not the failure of God’s love for us; it is that love in action. For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial, is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet.”
Consider watching Shadowlands, a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. Shadowlands is about the courtship and marriage of Lewis to American poet Joy Gresham – and her death that follows.
18. “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’”
Consider these words if you feel you need to keep a “stiff upper lip” following the death of your loved one.
19. “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
C.S. Lewis was born in Ireland in 1898.
20. “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
We include quotes from Lewis’ other writings in our list. Consider sharing this thought at your loved one’s service.
21. “The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God’s love for us does not.”
This is a great reminder to share at a believer’s funeral.
22. “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”
Lewis and JRR Tolkien were good friends.
23. “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
This quote may not be easy to hear, but you may connect with it.
Create a Funeral Plan
Do you have a favorite quote or poem by C.S. Lewis? Do you have a favorite song you would like to have played at your funeral? If so, take time to record your preferences in your end-of-life plan.
An end-of-life plan also allows you to record your preference for your method of disposition and your final resting place. You can even leave behind requests for how you want people to dress at your services and the type of flowers you want on your grave.
