Charles Williams Quotes & Sayings

But Lord Arglay, at once in contact and detached, at once faithless and believing, beheld all these things in the light of that fastidious and ironical goodwill which, outside mystical experience, is the finest and noblest capacity man has developed in and against the universe. — Charles Williams

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

but he did not change his purpose, nor did the universe invite him to change. It accepted the choice; no more preventing him than it prevents a child playing with fire or a fool destroying his love. It has not our kindness or our decency; if it is good, its goodness is of another kind than ours. — Charles Williams

But there is one thing only at which I have wondered at times, and yet it seemed foolish to think of it. It will happen sometimes when one has worked hard and done all that one can for the purpose before one-it is happened then that I have stood up and been content with the world of things and with what has been done there through me. And this may be pride, or it may be the full stress of the whole being and delight in labour-there are 100 explanations. That I have wondered whether that profound repose was not communicated from some far source and whether the life that is in it was altogether governed by time. And I'm sure that state never comes while I am concerned with myself, and I have thought today that in some strange way that state was itself the Stone. But if so then assuredly none of these men shall find it secret."
"Is that the end of desire?" Chloe said. — Charles Williams

Nothing was certain, but everything was safe - that was part of the mystery of Love. — Charles Williams

, Stanhope delayed a moment behind Miss Fox to add: "The substantive, of course, governs the adjective; not the other way round."
"The substantive?" Pauline asked blankly.
"Good. It contains terror, not terror good. I'm keeping you. Good-bye, Periel," and he was gone. — Charles Williams

The altar must be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place. — Charles Williams

Hell is indefinite. — Charles Williams

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

Play and pray; but on the whole do not pray when you are playing and do not play when you are praying. — Charles Williams

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

Her mouth was soft and moist, and she came to me like a dachshund jumping into your lap. — Charles Williams

Why isn't one taught how to be loved? Why isn't one taught anything? — Charles Williams

There is no possible idea," Kenneth thought as he came onto the terrace, "to which the mind of man can't supply some damned alternative or other. Yet one must act. — Charles Williams

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

Let us have all the delights of which we are capable. — Charles Williams

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

Unless devotion is given to the thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter. — Charles Williams

There was no way to kiss her like a good boy. You could start out that way, but you always ended up on the other side of the tracks. If you hated her, it didn't make any difference; it worked just the same. — Charles Williams

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

"Nought usually comes at the beginning," Ralph said. "Not necessarily," said Sibyl. "It might come anywhere. Nought isn't a number at all. It's the opposite of number." Nancy looked up from the cards. "Got you, aunt," she said. "What about ten? Nought's a number there - it's part of ten." "Well, if you say that any mathematical arrangement of one and nought really makes ten - " Sibyl smiled. "Can it possibly be more than a way of representing ten?" — Charles Williams

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

How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for? — Charles Williams

There is, it seems, a law in things that if a man is compelled to choose between two good actions, mutually exclusive, the one which he chooses to neglect will in course of time avenge itself on him. Rightly considered, this is a comfortable if chastening thought, for it implies that the nature of good is such that it can never, not even for some other mode of itself, be neglected. If ever it is, for whatever admirable reasons, set on one side it will certainly return. — Charles Williams

I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been. — Charles Williams

I got both hands on her throat and there was nothing inside me but the black madness of that desire to kill her, to close my hands until she turned purple and lay still and there'd be an end to her forever. Let them send me to the chair. Let 'em burn me. All they could do was kill me. — Charles Williams

It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else. — Charles Williams

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

Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition. — Charles Williams

We are," he thought to himself, "becoming anthropomorphic a little rapidly. We shall be asking the Stone what it would like for breakfast next." . . . Now that we know we create gods, do not let us hesitate in the work." He blinked inwardly at the phrase and proceeded. "But I have promised to believe in God, and here is a temptation to infidelity already, since I know that any god in whom I can believe will be consonant with my mind. So if I believe it must be in a god consonant with me. This would seem to limit God vary considerably. — Charles Williams

The hell with her; I wouldn't go back. But wouldn't I? What about later on? Keeping the thought of her out of that bleak hotbox of a room was going to be like trying to dam a river with a tennis racket. — Charles Williams

It is easier often to forgive than to be forgiven; yet it is fatal to be willing to be forgiven by God and to be reluctant to be forgiven by men. — Charles Williams

Dearest, I don't like you a bit," Anthony interrupted again. "I think you're a very detestable, selfish pig and prig. But I'm often wildly in love with you, and so I see you're not. But I'm sure your only chance of salvation is to marry me. — Charles Williams

It'll do you all the good in the world, Giles, to be a little uncertain of yourself". — Charles Williams

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

The girl was in fact so patient with the old lady that she had not yet noticed that she was never given an opportunity to be patient. She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's. — Charles Williams

The most he would do was to promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. It is about all that, looking back on the history of the Church, one can feel that they have not done. — Charles Williams

And jewels and words are no less and no more necessary than cotton and silence. — Charles Williams

Of Adam and Eve: They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it. — Charles Williams

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

Harry," she said, her voice a little thick with the whisky. "You found the way, didn't you?" What's so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do. — Charles Williams

Our crucifixes exhibit the pain, but they veil, perhaps necessarily, the obscenity: but the death of the God-Man was both. — Charles Williams

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

You will all know that in the Middle Ages there were supposed to be various classes of angels. these hierarchized celsitudes are but the last traces in a less philosophical age of the ideas which Plato taught his disciples existed in the spiritual world. — Charles Williams

The famous saying 'God is love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God. — Charles Williams

Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit. — Charles Williams

Pardon,Periel, like Love, is only ours for fun: essentially we don't and can't. — Charles Williams

The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church. — Charles Williams

But no verse, not Stanhope's, not Shakespeare's, not Dante's could rival the original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact. — Charles Williams

To forgive and to be forgiven are the two points of holy magnificence and holy modesty; round these two centres the whole doctrine of largesse revolves. — Charles Williams

But again He is equally present in sudden unexpected moments, and it is the neglect of these moments that is the most fruitful source of disbelief in Him. — Charles Williams

Would you rather be more abominable than you sound or sound more abominable than you are? The answer is I would rather be neither but I am both. — Charles Williams

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven. — Charles Williams

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

Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice.
The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius."
"Quite," Anthony answered. — Charles Williams

We who are here to-night are here as the servants of the guests of a great University, a University of knowledge, scholarship, and intellect. You do well to be proud of it. But I have wondered whether there may not be colleges and faculties of other experiences than yours, and whether even now in the far corners of the continents powers not yours are being brought to fruition. I have myself been something of a traveller, and every time I return to England I wonder whether the games of those children do not hold more intense life than the talk of your learned men
a more intense passion for discovery, a greater power of exploration, new raptures, unknown paths of glorious knowledge; whether you may not yet sit at the feet of the natives of the Amazon or the Zambesi: whether the fakirs and the herdsmen, the witch-doctors may not enter the kingdom of man before you — Charles Williams

She sat the sister of Arthur, the wife of Lot
four sons got by him, and one not. — Charles Williams

Job plunges into a series of demands on and accusations of God which may be and indeed are epigrams of high intelligence, but are not noticeably patient. — Charles Williams

It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts. — Charles Williams

You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you. — Charles Williams

What's the matter with you, Madox? You got a grudge against the world? — Charles Williams

If the redeemed sing, presumably someone must write the songs. — Charles Williams

Over the white curve he had looked into incredible space; abysses of intelligence lay beyond it. — Charles Williams

I will not seek it," the other replied. "It has been opened once and it is enough. And you
are you sure that man can conquer until he has been wholly defeated? Are you sure that he can find plenitude till he has known utter despair? You will not let him despair of himself, but it may be that only in such a complete despair he finds that which cannot despair and is something other than man. — Charles Williams

Sir Joshua Reynolds, said Jonathan, once alluded to 'common observation and a plain understanding' as the source of all art. — Charles Williams

The strong hands of God twisted the crown of thorns into a crown of glory; and in such hands we are safe. — Charles Williams