Charles Williams

Charles Walter Stansby Williams (20 September 1886 – 15 May 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.

Quotes

• The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
  • War in Heaven (1930), Ch. 1, first sentence

• An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
  • War in Heaven (1930), Ch. 9

• He said: "If I thought more of myself?"
  "You wouldn't have much difficulty in finding it," she answered. "Let's walk."
  He didn't understand the first phrase, but he turned and went by her side, silent while he heard the words.  Much difficulty in finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he thought of himself more; that was what he had said or she had said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was apart and his; for that was the difficulty all the while, that she was truly his, and wouldn't be, but if he thought more of her truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way, for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if they did away with the way she went away, then Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves, two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him, in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of himself.
  • Descent into Hell (1937), Ch. 5, "Return to Eden"

• There were no Calvinists or Dominics or Augustines. The man who was most like those great ones was a Dane, a contemporary of Hans Andersen, but though Hans Andersen achieved world-wide repute at once, Soren Kierkegaard had to wait for his through some seventy years. It has taken Christendom that long to catch him up; it took fifty years to catch up St. Thomas, and it has not caught up Dante yet. He coordinated experiences in a new manner; say, using the old word, that he caused alien and opposite experience to coinhere. ... No doubt as soon as Kierkegaard becomes fashionable he will be explained. His imagination will be made to depend on his personal history, and his sayings will be so moderated in our minds that they will soon become not his saying but ours. It is a very terrible thing to consider how often this has happened with the great, and how often we are contented to understand what we have neatly supposed that they have said.
  • The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church by Charles Williams 1939, 2002 P. 213

• 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.
  • The Descent of the Dove (1939), Ch. 5

• If one is anxious to write about God, one ought to be anxious to write well.
  • "The Productions of Time", Time and Tide, Vol. XXII, No. 4 (25 January 1941), pp. 72–73

• Christianity and life ought to be one.
  • The Forgiveness of Sin (1942), Ch. 6

• She was dead, but her very death heightened that word "supernatural"; it was what she, not being, was.
  • All Hallows Eve, rejected first draft. Quoted in The Inklings (1978) by Humphrey Carpenter, part 4, chapter 1, "No one turned up", p. 204

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Charles Williams (British writer) on Wikipedia