Quotes by Ellis Peters

“There's an art in every labour.”

“Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment!”

“There never was, for all I could ever learn, a time when living was easy and peaceful.”

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

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

“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.”

“The trouble with me, he thought unhappily, is that I have been about the world long enough to know that God's plans for us, however infallibly good, may not take the form we expect and demand.”

“God, nevertheless, required a little help from men, and what he mostly got was hindrance.”

“Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.”

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

“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 i...”

“Oh, sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith." (Br. Cadfael)”

“So, wonder! I also wonder about you," said Cadfael mildly. "Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?”

“Child, [death] is with us always, said Cadfael, patient beside him. Last summer ninety-five men died here in the town, none of whom had done murder. For choosing the wrong side, they died. It falls...”

“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.”

“I think there are some who live on a knife-edge in the soul, and at times are driven to hurl themselves into the air, at the mercy of heaven or he'll which way to fall.”

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

“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.”

“Well, a man can but hold fast to what he believes right, and even the opponent he baulks should value him for that.”

“Perhaps thought really is prayer.”