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You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.
-C. S. Lewis
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You Can’t Get Second

C. S. Lewis
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You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.

Understanding the Quote: "you can’t get second things by putting them first. you get second..."

This quote by C. S. Lewis reflects deeply on the theme of firsts. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Firsts, Put First Things First, First Things First, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how C. S. Lewis interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis is celebrated for insightful thoughts on firsts and put first things first. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Firsts
Put First Things First
First Things First
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Treasure
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Narnia
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Catholic
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Telling The Truth
The Game Is To Have Them All Running About With Fire Extinguishers When There Is A Flood, And All Crowding To That Side Of The Boat Which Is Already Nearly Gunwale Under.
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Fire
Games
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Heart
Heaven
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Mediocrity
Dozen
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Trying
Biting
Whenever You Find A Man Who Says He Does Not Believe In A Real Right And Wrong, You Will Find The Same Man Going Back On This A Moment Later. He May Break His Promise To You, But If You Try Breaking One To Him He Will Be Complaining 'it's Not Fair' Before You Can Say Jack Robinson.
Real
Believe
Men
With The Possible Exception Of The Equator, Everything Begins Somewhere.
Inspirational
New Beginnings
Exception To The Rule
The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ, To Make Them Little Christs. If They Are Not Doing That, All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible Itself, Are Simply A Waste Of Time. God Became Man For No Other Purpose.
Men
Religion
Church
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.
Inspirational
Wisdom
Miracle
The Love Of Knowledge Is A Kind Of Madness.
Love
Knowledge
Mad
The Real Job Of Every Moral Teacher Is To Keep Bringing Us Back To The Simple Principles, Which We're So Anxious Not To See.
Teacher
Jobs
Real
We Are Not Meant To Be Perpetually Solemn: We Must Play.
Play
Solemn
Meant To Be
The Holier A Man Becomes, The More He Mourns Over The Unholiness Which Remains In Him.
Men
Holiness
Mourn
At A Well In A Yard They Met A Man Who Was Beating A Boy. The Stick Burst Into A Flower In The Mans Hand. He Tried To Drop It, But It Stuck To His Hand. His Arm Became A Branch, His Body The Trunk Of A Tree, His Feet Took Root.
Flower
Boys
Men
The Christian Idea Of Marriage Is Based On Christ's Words That A Man And Wife Are To Be Regarded As A Single Organism - For That Is What The Words 'one Flesh' Would Be In Modern English. And The Christians Believe That When He Said This He Was Not Expressing A Sentiment But Stating A Fact - Just As One Is Stating A Fact When One Says That A Lock And Its Key Are One Mechanism, Or That A Violin And A Bow Are One Musical Instrument.
Christian
Believe
Men
There Is A Story About A Schoolboy Who Was Asked What He Thought God Was Like. He Replied That, As Far As He Could Make Out, God Was 'the Sort Of Person Who Is Always Snooping Around To See If Anyone Is Enjoying Himself And Then Trying To Stop It.'
Trying
Stories
Snooping
I Have Been Suspected Of Being What Is Called A Fundamentalist. That Is Because I Never Regard Any Narrative As Unhistorical Simply On The Ground That It Includes The Miraculous.
Narrative
Miraculous
Has Beens
Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing--rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.
Mother
Father
Past
The Man In Christ Rose Again, Not Only The God.
Men
Rose
Resurrection
Further Up And Further In!
Never, Never Pin Your Whole Faith On Any Human Being: Not If He Is The Best And Wisest In The Whole World. There Are Lots Of Nice Things You Can Do With Sand; But Do Not Try Building A House On It.
Fear
Nice
House
If One Is Only To Talk From First-hand Experience, Conversation Would Be A Very Poor Business.
Wisdom
Hands
Would Be
Aslan" Said Lucy "you're Bigger". "that Is Because You Are Older, Little One" Answered He. "not Because You Are?" "i Am Not. But Every Year You Grow, You Will Find Me Bigger".
Years
Littles
Bigger
[to Have Faith In Christ] Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice. Thus If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way. Not Doing These Things In Order To Be Saved, But Because He Has Begun To Save You Already. Not Hoping To Get To Heaven As A Reward For Your Actions, But Inevitably Wanting To Act In A Certain Way Because A First Faint Gleam Of Heaven Is Already Inside You.
Faith
Mean
Order
You Find Out The Strength Of A Wind By Trying To Walk Against It, Not By Lying Down.
Lying
Wind
Trying
The Sin Both Of Men And Of Angels, Was Rendered Possible By The Fact That God Gave Us Free Will.
Angel
Men
Facts
Do Not Be Deceived, Wormwood. Our Cause Is Never More In Danger Than When A Human, No Longer Desiring, But Still Intending, To Do Our Enemy's Will, Looks Round Upon A Universe From Which Every Trace Of Him Seems To Have Vanished, And Asks Why He Has Been Forsaken, And Still Obeys.
Enemy
Looks
Letters
The Poison Was Brewed In These West Lands But It Has Spat Itself Everywhere By Now. However Far You Went You Would Find The Machines, The Crowded Cities, The Empty Thrones, The False Writings, The Barren Beds: Men Maddened With False Promises And Soured With True Miseries, Worshipping The Iron Works Of Their Own Hands, Cut Off From Earth Their Mother And From The Father In Heaven. You Might Go East So Far The East Became West And You Returned To Britain Across The Great Ocean, But Even So You Would Not Have Come Out Anywhere Into The Light. The Shadow Of One Dark Wing Is Over All Tellus.
Mother
Father
Ocean
Ambition! We Must Be Careful What We Mean By It. If It Means The Desire To Get Ahead Of Other People - Which Is What I Think It Does Mean - Then It Is Bad. If It Means Simply Wanting To Do A Thing Well, Then It Is Good. It Isn't Wrong For An Actor To Want To Act His Part As Well As It Can Possibly Be Acted, But The Wish To Have His Name In Bigger Type Than The Other Actors Is A Bad One.
Ambition
Mean
Thinking
Omnipotence Means Power To Do All That Is Intrinsically Possible, Not To Do The Intrinsically Impossible. You May Attribute Miracles To Him, But Not Nonsense.
Mean
Omnipotence
Miracle
Who Can Duly Adore That Love Which Will Open The High Gates To A Prodigal Who Is Brought In Kicking, Struggling, Resentful, And Darting His Eyes In Every Direction For A Chance Of Escape? The Words Compelle Intrare, Compel Them To Come In, Have Been So Abused By Wicked Men That We Shudder At Them; But, Properly Understood, They Plumb The Depth Of The Divine Mercy. The Hardness Of God Is Kinder Than The Softness Of Man, And His Compulsion Is Our Liberation.
Struggle
Eye
Men
Anger Is The Fluid Love Bleeds When Cut.
Friendship
Cutting
Friendship Love
And The Whole Forest Would Give Itself Up To Jollification For Weeks On End.
Giving
Forests
Week
The Discomfiture We Feel May Be Our Most Accurate Human Sensation; Reminding Us We Are Not Quite "at Home" Here.
Home
May
Accurate
If Crime And Disease Are To Be Regarded As The Same Thing, It Follows That Any State Of Mind Which Our Masters Choose To Call 'disease' Can Be Treated As A Crime And Compulsorily Cured.
Mind
Disease
Crime
If God Had Granted All The Silly Prayers I've Made In My Life, Where Should I Be Now?
Inspirational
Prayer
Silly
...here Also Forgiving Does Not Mean Excusing. Many People Seem To Think It Does. They Think That If You Ask Them To Forgive Someone Who Has Cheated Or Bullied Them You Are Trying To Make Out That There Was Really No Cheating Or Bullying. But If That Were So, There Would Be Nothing To Forgive. (this Doesn't Mean That You Must Necessarily Believe His Next Promise. It Does Mean That You Must Make Every Effort To Kill Every Taste Of Resentment In Your Own Heart - Every Wish To Humiliate Or Hurt Him Or To Pay Him Out.)
Bullying
Cheating
Hurt
When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.
Sacrifice
Men
Self
One Can Regard The Moral Law As An Illusion, And So Cut Himself Off From The Common Ground Of Humanity.
Cutting
Law
Humanity
The Real Test Of Being In The Presence Of God Is, That You Either Forget About Yourself Altogether Or See Yourself As A Small, Dirty Object.
Real
Dirty
Tests
'being In Love' First Moved Them To Promise Fidelity: This Quieter Love Enables Them To Keep The Promise.
Inspirational
Being In Love
Promise
Always Prefer The Plain Direct Word To The Long, Vague One.
Long
Vague
Direct
What Seem Our Worst Prayers May Really Be, In God's Eyes, Our Best. Those, I Mean, Which Are Least Supported By Devotional Feeling. For These May Come From A Deeper Level Than Feeling. God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.
Wisdom
Prayer
Mean
A Work Of (whatever) Art Can Be Either 'received' Or 'used'. ...'using' Is Inferior To 'reception' Because Art, If Used Rather Than Received, Merely Facilitates, Brightens, Relieves Or Palliates Our Life, And Does Not Add To It ... When The Art In Question Is Literature A Complication Arises, For To 'receive' Significant Words Is Always, In One Sense, To 'use' Them, To Go Through And Beyond Them To An Imagined Something Which Is Not Itself Verbal.
Art
Poetry
Doe
For The Past Twenty Years You And I Have Been Fed All Day Long On Good Solid Lies About Sex
Sex
Lying
Past
Enemy Occupied Territory Is What The World Is.
Enemy
World
Territory
When An Artist Is In The Strict Sense Working, He Of Course Takes Into Account The Existing Tastes, Interests And Capacity Of His Audience. These No Less Than The Language , The Marble, The Paint, Are Part Of His Aw Material.; To Be Used, Tamed, Sublimated, Not Ignored Or Defied. Haughty Indifference To Them Is Not Genius, It Is Laziness And Incompetence.
Artist
Culture
Genius
Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.
Way
Narnia
Happens
He Who Has God And Everything Else Has No More Than He Who Has God Only.
God
Christian
Theologian
Really Great Moral Teachers Never Do Introduce New Moralities: It Is Quacks And Cranks Who Do That.
Teacher
Morality
Introducing
It Is Very True. But Even A Traitor May Mend. I Have Known One That Did.
May
Traitor
Very True
Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.
Real
Men
Differences
No People Find Each Other More Absurd Than Lovers
People
Lovers
Absurd
Pride Gets No Pleasure Out Of Having Something, Only Out Of Having More Of It Than The Next Man.
Humility
Pride
Men
God Sometimes Seems To Speak To Us Most Intimately When He Catches Us, As It Were, Off Our Guard.
Sometimes
Speak
Seems
I Am In Love And Out Of It I Will Not Go.
Marriage
I Hate You
Positive Marriage
An Explanation Of Cause Is Not A Justification By Reason.
Literature
Causes
Reason
Remember, He Is Not, Like You, A Pure Spirit. Never Having Been A Human (oh That Abominable Advantage Of The Enemy's) You Don't Realize How Enslaved They Are To The Pressure Of The Ordinary.
Enemy
Ordinary
Pressure
And I Say Also This. I Do Not Think The Forest Would Be So Bright, Nor The Water So Warm, Nor Love So Sweet, If There Were No Danger In The Lakes.
Sweet
Thinking
Lakes
Children Have One Kind Of Silliness, As You Know, And Grown-ups Have Another Kind.
Children
Kind
Silliness
People Shouldn't Call For Demons Unless They Really Mean What They Say.
Mean
People
Demon
When We Lose One Blessing, Another Is Often Most Unexpectedly Given In Its Place.
Inspirational
Blessed
Blessing
Read And Re-read--"re-reading, We Always Find A New Book.
Book
Reading
New Books
As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.
Humility
Sin Of Pride
Long
We Reduce Things To Mere Nature In Order That We May "conquer" Them.
Order
May
Conquer
Fallen Man Is Not Simply An Imperfect Creature Who Needs Improvement: He Is A Rebel Who Must Lay Down His Arms. Laying Down Your Arms, Surrendering, Saying You Are Sorry, Realizing That You Have Been On The Wrong Track And Getting Ready To Start Life Over Again From The Ground Floor-that Is The Only Way Out Of A "hole." This Process Of Surrender-this Movement Full Speed Astern-is Repentance.
Sorry
Men
Track
He Is Not The Soul Of Nature, Nor Any Part Of Nature. He Inhabits Eternity: He Dwells In A High And Holy Place: Heaven Is His Throne, Not His Vehicle, Earth Is His Footstool, Not His Vesture. One Day He Will Dismantle Both And Make A New Heaven And Earth. He Is Not To Be Identified Even With The 'divine Spark' In Man. He Is 'god And Not Man.
Men
Heaven
Soul
The Only Things We Can Keep Are The Things We Freely Give To God. What We Try To Keep For Ourselves Is Just What We Are Sure To Lose.
Letting Go
Giving
Trying
If You Don't Listen To Theology, That Won't Mean You Have No Ideas About God, It Will Mean You Have A Lot Of Wrong Ones.
Mean
Ideas
Theology
If God Is Love, He Is, By Definition, Something More Than Mere Kindness. And It Appears, From All The Records, That Though He Has Often Rebuked Us And Condemned Us, He Has Never Regarded Us With Contempt. He Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.
Kindness
Records
Definitions
We Poison The Wine As He Decants It Into Us; Murder A Melody He Would Play With Us As The Instrument...hence All Sin, Whatever Else It Is, Is Sacrilege.
Wine
Play
Poison
Youth And Age Touch Only The Surface Of Our Lives.
Age
Youth
Surface
I Do Not Think That All Who Choose Wrong Roads Perish; But Their Rescue Consists In Being Put Back On The Right Road.
Thinking
Rescue
Great Divorce
I Do Not Know Why There Is This Difference, But I Am Sure That God Keeps No One Waiting Unless He Sees That It Is Good For Him To Wait. When You Do Enter Your Room, You Will Find That The Long Wait Has Done You Some Kind Of Good Which You Would Not Have Had Otherwise. But You Must Regard It As Waiting, Not As Camping. You Must Keep On Praying For Light: And Of Course, Even In The Hall, You Must Begin Trying To Obey The Rules Which Are Common To The Whole House. And Above All You Must Be Asking Which Door Is The True One; Not Which Pleases You Best By Its Paint And Paneling.
Light
Doors
Differences
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.
Imagination
Causes
Reason
Ink Is The Great Cure For All Human Ills.
Ink
Cures
Humans
Thus The Criminal Ceases To Be A Person, A Subject Of Rights And Duties, And Becomes Merely An Object On Which Society Can Work. And This Is, In Principle, How Hitler Treated The Jews. They Were Objects; Killed Not For Ill Desert But Because, On His Theories, They Were A Disease In Society. If Society Can Mend, Remake, And Unmake Men At Its Pleasure, Its Pleasure May, Of Course, Be Humane Or Homicidal. The Difference Is Important. But, Either Way, Rulers Have Become Owners.
Men
Rights
Differences
Consciousness Is Either Inexplicable Illusion, Or Else Revelation.
Mystery
Wonder
Consciousness
Both Good And Evil, When They Are Full Grown, Become Retrospective...that Is What Mortals Misunderstand. They Say Of Some Temporary Suffering, 'no Future Bliss Can Make Up For It,' Not Knowing That Heaven, Once Attained, Will Work Backwards And Turn Even That Agony Into A Glory. And Of Some Sinful Pleasure They Say 'let Me But Have This And I'll Take The Consequences': Little Dreaming How Damnation Will Spread Back And Back Into Their Past And Contaminate The Pleasure Of The Sin.
Inspirational
Dream
Religious
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