Ellis Peters Quotes

Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.

What are wits for unless a man uses them?

Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired

Integrity expects integrity.

as roads go, the road home is as good as any.

You'll never get to be a saint if you deny the bit of the devil in you.

Despair is deadly sin, but worse, it is mortal folly.

Only people who're positive enough to have friends have enemies. When you're as glum and morose as he was, people just give up and go away.

Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.

It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.

Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems.

To have faith in Divine protection is good, but even beter if backed by the pratical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals.

I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians.

You cannot demand truth, and then select half and throw the inconvenient remainder away.

Youth is no less vulnerable, by the very quality it has of making the heart ache that beholds and has lost it.

I do believe I begin to grasp the nature of miracles! For would it be a miracle, if there was any reason for it? Miracles have nothing to do with reason. Miracles contradict reason, they strike clean across mere human deserts, and deliver and save where they will. If they made sense, they would not be miracles.

In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price. You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.

Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out the passing day and put away to think of afterwards.

Too much trust is folly, in an imperfect world.

Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.

The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.

There is in the end no remedy but truth. It is the one course that cannot be evil.

If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?" "Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.

There is no one who cannot be hated, against whatever odds. Nor anyone who cannot be loved, against all reason.

Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.

Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light.

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.

The voices of cold reason were talking, as usual, to deaf ears.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.

Beauty is a perilous gift.

the success of a holiday depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you.

They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.

One century's saint is the next century's heretic ... and one century's heretic is the next century's saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

Life goes not in a straight line, lad, but in a circle. The first half we spend venturing as far as the world's end from home and kin and stillness, and the latter half brings us back, by roundabout ways but surely, to that state from which we set out.

Of all the reports that fly about the world, ill news is the surest of all to arrive!

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire.

Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid.

A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.