"If [his recently deceased wife Joy] 'is not,' then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared. But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe – more strictly, I can’t believe – that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets. No, my real fear is not of materialism. If it were true, we – or what we mistake for 'we' – could get out, get from under the harrow. An overdose of sleeping pills would do it. I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, 'God always geometrizes.' Supposing the truth were 'God always vivisects'?" C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed
"At the sight of Aslan the cheeks of the Telmarine soldiers became the colour of cold gravy..." C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian
"As knowledge increases, wonder deepens." Charles Morgan, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail April 24, 2013
“History to me is the story of people and how they lived, not just an endless story of dynasty and wars. They are a part of the story, of course…" Louis L’Amour Education of a Wandering Man
"A trend is a trend is a trend, but the question is will it bend? Will it alter its course, through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?" Sir Alec Cairncross, former chief economic adviser to the British government, quoted in The Economist August 10, 1991
"Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." Anne Lamott, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe and Mail September 6, 2002
"Was Kierkegaard right when he said that all despair about earthly things is actually – and without us necessarily being aware of this – despair about the Eternal?" Leszek Kolakowski in First Things June-July 2003
"A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative." One of "Gilbert!’s Top Dozen Very Bad Puns" in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #8 (July/August 2002)