Ellis Peters Quotes

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....

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

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 q...

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.

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....

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

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

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

What is done matters, but what is yet to do matters far more. Cadfael, Pg. 255

Don't reach for the halo too soon. You have plenty of time to enjoy yourself, even a little maliciously sometimes, before you settle down to being a saint.

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

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.

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

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 up...

Perhaps thought really is prayer.

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

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.

Women want to own a man, and that grows irksome.

Every Spring is the only Spring, a perpetual astonishment. It bursts upon a man every year, thought Cadfael, contemplating it with delight in spite of all anxieties, as though it had never happened be...