Did you know? C.S. Lewis never actually said the line, “You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”


We get a lot of questions about where to find Lewis quotes, and the source of this one is frequently asked for, with good reason!


A very similar quote can be found instead in Walter Miller, Jr.’s famous sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. In part III, the Abbot Zerchi says, "You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.” The Doctor in dialogue with the Abbot calls this a “semantic confusion.” Lewis greatly enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz, calling it a “major work,” but he did not take this line from it.


In fact, the quote can be found even earlier than that. In 1892, a piece was published in the British Friend, a Quaker magazine, which attributed the line to George MacDonald: “‘Never tell a child you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.” Lewis, of course, had great reverence for MacDonald, so perhaps this explains how the famous saying became attributed to him.

— C.S. Lewis Foundation