# Quote — Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry

> "Even if some details of dogma aren't true—or even all of 'em—think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!"
>
> "Are they? I wonder! Don't cheerful agnostics, who know they are going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they'll go to hell themselves. Consolation? No!"

- Author: [Sinclair Lewis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis.md)
- Book: [Elmer Gantry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/elmer-gantry.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis#Elmer_Gantry_(1927)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/elmer-gantry/even-if-some

## More from this book

> His reasoning had been introverted, turned from an examination of men as mammals and devoted to a sorrow that sinful and aching souls should not more readily seek the security of a mystic process known as Conviction, Repentance, and Salvation, which he was assured by the noblest and most literate men he had ever known, was guaranteed to cure all woe. His own experience did not absolutely confirm this.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/elmer-gantry/his-reasoning-had.md)

> His text was from Proverbs: "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins."
>
> He seized the sides of the pulpit with his powerful hands, glared at the congregation, decided to look benevolent after all, and exploded: ''"In the hustle and bustle of daily life I wonder how many of us stop to think that in all that is highest and best we are ruled not by even our most up-and-coming efforts but by Love? What is Love—the divine Love of which the—the great singer teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow that comes after the dark cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest stars we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still around the quiet tomb. What is it inspires all great men—be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed is music but the voice of Love!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/elmer-gantry/his-text-was.md)

> It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three of four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/elmer-gantry/it-was-not.md)