Charles Williams

Editor

1886-09-20

Quotes by Charles Williams

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

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• . Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?Why, certainly, Miss Fox said. Terribly--dreadfully--very.Yes, Stanhope said again. Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness.I don't see how goodness can be dreadful, Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?It was you who said 'terribly', Stanhope reminded her with a smile, I only agreed.And if things are terrifying, Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, can they be good?He looked down on her. Yes, surely, he said, with more energy. Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?

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• An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.

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

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• 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.

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• The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.

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

  Read quote

• An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.

  Read quote

• . Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?Why, certainly, Miss Fox said. Terribly--dreadfully--very.Yes, Stanhope said again. Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness.I don't see how goodness can be dreadful, Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?It was you who said 'terribly', Stanhope reminded her with a smile, I only agreed.And if things are terrifying, Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, can they be good?He looked down on her. Yes, surely, he said, with more energy. Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?

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• 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.

  Read quote

• The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.

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

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• It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.

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