Home > Author > Charles Williams

Charles Williams QUOTES

Charles Williams QUOTES

1 " The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it. "

― Charles Williams , The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante

2 " but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. "

― Charles Williams , War in Heaven

3 " An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy. "

― Charles Williams , War in Heaven

4 " The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. "

― Charles Williams , War in Heaven

5 " It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else. "

― Charles Williams , Descent into Hell

6 " The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately. The converts had known a first coming. And then? And then! That was the trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as universal and as durable — as time. "

― Charles Williams

7 " The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately, and no doubt this was so in the ordinary literal sense. But it was certainly expected also in another sense. The converts in all the cities of Asia and (soon) of Europe where the small groups were founded had known, in their conversion, one way or another, a first coming of their Redeemer. And then? And then! That was the consequent task and trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited for his further exhibition of himself. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as catholic — as universal and as durable — as time. "

― Charles Williams , The Descent of the Dove

8 " The altar must be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place. "

― Charles Williams

9 " It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance. "

― Charles Williams

10 " [...] the war between good and evil existed no longer, for the thing beneath the Graal was not fighting but vomiting. "

― Charles Williams , War in Heaven

11 " . Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"
Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, "That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?"
"Why, certainly," Miss Fox said. "Terribly--dreadfully--very."
"Yes," Stanhope said again. "Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness."
"I don't see how goodness can be dreadful," Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. "If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?"
"It was you who said 'terribly'," Stanhope reminded her with a smile, "I only agreed."
"And if things are terrifying," Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, "can they be good?"
He looked down on her. "Yes, surely," he said, with more energy. "Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence? "

― Charles Williams , Descent into Hell

12 " Why was this bloody world created?"

"As a sewer for the stars," a voice in front of him said. "Alternatively to know God and to glorify Him forever."

" [...] The two answers are not, of course, necessarily alternative. "

― Charles Williams , War in Heaven

13 " Nothing was certain, but everything was safe - that was part of the mystery of Love. "

― Charles Williams , The Greater Trumps

14 " Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit. "

― Charles Williams , Descent into Hell

15 " I hope you still think that ideas are more dangerous than material thing," Quentin said. "That is what you were arguing at lunch."
Anthony pondered while glancing from side to side before he answered, "Yes, I do. All material danger is limited, whereas interior danger is unlimited. It's more dangerous for you to hate than kill, isn't it? "

― Charles Williams , The Place of the Lion

16 " The beginning of Christendom, is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metphysical trigonometry finds it among the spiritual Secrets, at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of the Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement, the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind, is, in effect, theology. "

― Charles Williams , The Descent of the Dove

17 " They're beautiful hands," he said; "though they've ruined the world, they're beautiful hands. "

― Charles Williams , The Greater Trumps

18 " I generally give the title-page a fair chance," Roger said. "Once can't always judge books merely by the cover. "

― Charles Williams , Shadows of Ecstasy

19 " She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's. "

― Charles Williams , Descent into Hell

20 " A man cannot love himself; he can only idolize it, and over the idol delightfully tyrannize - without purpose. The great gift which the simple idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose "

― Charles Williams , Descent into Hell