"It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts"
About this Quote
The line lands with a raised eyebrow: goodness, in public life, so often arrives as a prelude to being used, mocked, or quietly ignored. Charles Williams flips that expectation. By calling it "pleasant" and "unusual" in the same breath, he treats moral reward not as a rule of the universe but as an anomaly worth savoring - like spotting a rare bird in a city park. The pleasure isn’t just in justice being done; it’s in the surprise that it happens at all.
"Getting their deserts" carries a faintly old-fashioned bite. It’s the language of judgment, not applause. Williams isn’t describing a feel-good moment of validation; he’s invoking a moral ledger. That’s where the subtext sharpens: we’re accustomed to the idea that bad actors eventually get what’s coming. Seeing the reverse - good people receiving proportionate reward - feels almost transgressive, as if it violates the genre conventions of everyday experience.
The editorial mind shows in the sentence’s cool calibration. It’s written like a marginal note on human affairs: restrained, observant, slightly amused. As an editor, Williams would have lived amid reputations, patronage, and the messy politics of who gets credited. In that ecosystem, "thoroughly good people" are rare not because virtue is impossible, but because thoroughness is: consistency under pressure, decency without performance, competence without cruelty.
The intent, then, is not to romanticize virtue but to register how often systems fail to reward it - and how bracing it is, when they do, to watch the world briefly make sense.
"Getting their deserts" carries a faintly old-fashioned bite. It’s the language of judgment, not applause. Williams isn’t describing a feel-good moment of validation; he’s invoking a moral ledger. That’s where the subtext sharpens: we’re accustomed to the idea that bad actors eventually get what’s coming. Seeing the reverse - good people receiving proportionate reward - feels almost transgressive, as if it violates the genre conventions of everyday experience.
The editorial mind shows in the sentence’s cool calibration. It’s written like a marginal note on human affairs: restrained, observant, slightly amused. As an editor, Williams would have lived amid reputations, patronage, and the messy politics of who gets credited. In that ecosystem, "thoroughly good people" are rare not because virtue is impossible, but because thoroughness is: consistency under pressure, decency without performance, competence without cruelty.
The intent, then, is not to romanticize virtue but to register how often systems fail to reward it - and how bracing it is, when they do, to watch the world briefly make sense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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