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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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