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

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

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.

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

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.

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.