Charles Williams quotes

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)
Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Williams
I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been. View quote
Charles Williams
Play and pray; but on the whole do not pray when you are playing and do not play when you are praying. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Williams
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. View quote
Charles Williams
It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts. View quote
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)
Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition. View quote
Charles Williams
Christianity and life ought to be one. View quote
Charles Williams
If one is anxious to write about God, one ought to be anxious to write well. View quote
Charles Williams
Deep, deeper than we believe, lie the roots of sin; it is in the good that they exist; it is in the good that they thrive and send up sap and produce the black fruit of hell. View quote
Charles Williams
The strong hands of God twisted the crown of thorns into a crown of glory; and in such hands we are safe. View quote
Charles Williams
You can have money piled to the ceiling but the size of your funeral is still going to depend on the weather. View quote
Charles Williams
It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else. View quote
Charles Williams
Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit. View quote
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. View quote
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)
How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for? View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Williams
Hell is indefinite. View quote
Charles Williams