Inklings Quotes

“An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness.”
― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

“Behind these practical studies lay powerful, intertwined, and potentially contradictory beliefs: that language provides a key to the rational, scientific understanding of the world and that language is more than human speech, that it claims a divine origin and is the means by which God created the cosmos and Adam named the beasts.

As we will see, both ideas strongly influenced the Inklings, whose leading members wrote many words about the meaning of words. For Owen Barfield, language is the fossil record of the history and evolution of human consciousness; for C. S. Lewis, it is a mundane tool that "exists to communicate whatever it can communicate" but also, as in That Hideous Strength, an essential part of our metaphysical makeup for good or ill; for Charles Williams, language is power, a field of force for the magician, a vehicle of prayer for the believing Christian; for Tolkien, language is a fallen human instrument and a precious divine gift ("O felix peccatum Babel!" he exclaimed in his essay "English and Welsh"), a supreme art, and, as "Word", a name for God.”
― Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity... Hence true friendship is the least jealous of loves ... we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases.”
― John Hendrix

“Christopher Westcott slowly drank his pint of ale at the Bird and Baby, as locals liked to call the Eagle and Child, and basked in the familiar smells- old wood bathed in lemon oil, braised beef, stale beer that spackled the bar. The pub was a popular mecca for those who admired J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their entire literary giants they called Inklings.
Christopher wasn't even close to being a literary giant nor was he a tourist, but he enjoyed writing and liked to feign himself one of the professors who might have basked in the lively readings and debates of the Inklings instead of just the aromas of this pub.
Personally, he admired the writings of George MacDonald, the man C.S. Lewis considered his mentor. MacDonald was a writer and professor. And he was a frequently unemployed Scottish minister due to his views on God's love and grace. The man could speak the language of theologians at the same time he wrote books for children and readers of all ages whom he described as "child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." MacDonald was a man of integrity who believed that God did not punish His children except to amend and heal them. A man who believed God's love and grace was available to all people- a direct affront to the Calvinists in his era.”
― Melanie Dobson, Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor

“A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides Surnamed Polygrapheus, Logothete of the Theme of Geodesia in the Empire, Bard of the Court of Camelot, Malleus Malitiarium, Inclinga Sum Sometimes Known as Charles Williams.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien

“In November 1943, or thereabouts, Tolkien wrote a poem on Williams, titled ‘A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides Surnamed Polygrapheus, Logothete of the Theme of Geodesia in the Empire, Bard of the Court of Camelot, Malleus Malitiarium, Inclinga Sum Sometimes Known as Charles Williams’.”
― Raymond Edwards

“[I]t had seemed as if two streams of things — actual events and his own meditations — had flowed gently together; as if not he, but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world.”
― Charles Williams

“For the Inklings, language is not a communication tool but rather a portal into being – an invisible reality summoned into our world through the shape and sound of words. Properly speaking, words are incantations.”
― Eugene Terekhin, Eleven Hidden Gems in the Works of the Inklings: The "Music of Iluvatar" in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield

“We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep.”
― C.S. Lewis