Charles Williams Quotes
Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.
The strong hands of God twisted the crown of thorns into a crown of glory; and in such hands we are safe.
Unless devotion is given to the thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter.
Play and pray; but on the whole do not pray when you are playing and do not play when you are praying.
I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been
An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
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.
It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts.
It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.
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
Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit.
How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for?
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.
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.
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition.
One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.
J.R.R. Tolkien told a questioning correspondent, life's purpose is to know, praise, and thank God.
Christian myth, reveals the truth that "the Christian was (and is) still like his forefathers a mortal hemmed into a hostile world.
I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: "Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him." And they cried out in a great voice: "He made us." CS Lewis
Obedience appears to me more and more the whole business of life, the only road to love and peace.
Fidelity in marriage requires self-will and self-denial.
A Christian's duty, Lewis believed, is not simply to tolerate "X" but to make life with "X" an occasion to work on one's own character flaws.
It's not easy being a missionary, even with the key to the cosmos in your hand.
The teacher-student relationship evaporated, replaced by a rich and lively exchange of equals.
He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy.
Lewis spoke for almost every member when he said, "There is no sound I like better than adult male laughter.
A philosophy that cannot be lived is no philosophy at all.
C.S. Lewis had come to demand of his nightly prayers a "realization, " "a certain vividness of the imagination and the affectations" – a sure recipe for sleeplessness and misery.
A Christian atmosphere is no protection against preening egos.
The altar must be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place.
Williams was complex and tortured. He was not a saint but had his saintly side, which came and went, radiant and sincere as long as it lasted.
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.
I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been.
A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.
Lewis had developed a trademark style, slow enough for note taking, loud enough to rouse the dullest listener, straightforward, abundantly furnished with quotations, and lavish in wit.
A letter Lewis wrote reveals an 18-year-old with the energy of a schoolboy and the tastes of an octogenarian.
I generally give the title-page a fair chance, " Roger said. "Once can't always judge books merely by the cover.
In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield
Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.
Imagination pointed toward truth but could not disclose it directly.
We must picture Oxford, during World War I, not as the neomedieval paradise it would like to be, but as the military compound it was obliged to become.
The arts are the best Time Machine we have." C. S. Lewis
Now he must put into practice all his fine poetic thoughts about romantic love.
Passion does not translate easily into good income.
As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.
The unavoidable harshness of life surprised none of them, for they were Christians one and all, believing that they inhabited a fallen world, albeit one filled with God's grace.
The idyll ended, as idylls must.
The onslaught of scruples is a problem well attested in the spiritual life, especially among the young, where religious observances must be done perfectly to achieve a certain result.
