Charles Williams Quotes


"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
(Related: History, Church, Hell, Promise)

"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
(Related: Love, God, Famous, Meaning, Saying, Terror)

"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
(Related: Leadership, Church, Day, Religious)

"Play and pray; but on the whole do not pray when you are playing and do not play when you are praying."
- Charles Williams
(Related: Play)

"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
(Related: Fact)

"Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven."
- Charles Williams
(Related: Party)

"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
(Related: God, Intelligence, Accusations, Epigrams, Job, May)

"It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts."
- Charles Williams
(Related: People)

"Hell is indefinite."
- Charles Williams
(Related: Hell)

"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
(Related: Doctrine, Magnificence, Modesty)

"Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition."
- Charles Williams
(Related: People, Sin)

"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
(Related: Men, God)