“Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they oug...” — C.S. Lewis Quote

“Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.”

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.”

“He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered...He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man.”

“Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations, and where is our religion? We have none.”

“God is universal," spluttered the priest.”

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”

“At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.”

“He'd sit and listen to Nana's Jesus stories all day, but when she turned to the Old Testament prophets, Louis Valentine's little face would darken. He said, "I hate it when God is mean!”

“Soul is not even that Crackerjack prize that God and Satan scuffle over after the worms have all licked our bones. That's why, when we ponder--as sooner or later each of us must--exactly what we ought to be doing about our soul, religion is the wrong, if conventional, place to turn. Religion is little more than a transaction in which troubled people trade their souls for temporary and wholly illusionary psychological comfort--the old give-it-up-in-order-to-save-it routine. Religions lead us to believe that the soul is the ultimate family jewel and that in return for our mindless obedience, they can secure it for us in their vaults, or at least insure it against fire theft. They are mistaken.”