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

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

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

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.

Beauty is a perilous gift.

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.

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