Ellis Peters
Author
1913-09-28
Quotes by Ellis Peters
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So, wonder! I also wonder about you, said Cadfael mildly. Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?
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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.
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Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment!
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There's an art in every labour.
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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.
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What are wits for unless a man uses them?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians.
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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 upon blameless women in war, even in peace at the hands of evil men. It falls upon children who never did harm to any, upon old men, who in their lives have done good to many, and yet are brutally and senselessly slain. Never let it shake your faith that there is a balance hereafter. What you see is only a broken piece from a perfect whole." —Such justice as we see is also but a broken shred. But it is our duty to preserve what we may, and fit together such fragments as we find, and take the rest on trust.
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Oh, sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith. (Br. Cadfael)
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A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.
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There never was, for all I could ever learn, a time when living was easy and peaceful.
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God, nevertheless, required a little help from men, and what he mostly got was hindrance.
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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.
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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.
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Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.
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Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems.
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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.
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