Ellis Peters Quotes & Sayings

Traffic with the world is laid upon us for chastening, and for the testing of our vocation. The grace of God is not endangered by the follies or the wickedness of men. — Ellis Peters

Beauty is a perilous gift ... — Ellis Peters

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

I have been about the world long enough to know that God's plans for us, however infallibly good, may not take the form that we expect and demand. — Ellis Peters

The thing about fear," said Cadfael, seriously considering, "is that it is pointless. When need arises, fear is forgotten. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

What you do and what you are is what matters. — Ellis Peters

The success of a holiday depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you. — Ellis Peters

There is the matter of the girl, niece and heiress to the dead man. She is of great beauty," said Cadfael plainly, asserting his right to recognise and celebrate even the beauty of women, though their enjoyment he had now voluntarily forsworn, — Ellis Peters

Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out the passing day and put away to think of afterwards. — Ellis Peters

It was a matter of principle, or perhaps of honour, with Brother Cadfael, when a door opened before him suddenly and unexpectedly, to accept the offer and walk through it. He did so with even more alacrity if the door opened on a prospect of Wales; it might even be said that he broke into a trot, in case the door slammed again on that enchanting view. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

Well, you can fairly claim the day hasn't been wasted,' owned Cadfael generously, 'if something's been learned. — Ellis Peters

Cleverness and wisdom are not inevitable yoke-fellows. — Ellis Peters

Say your prayers, think quietly what you should do, do it, and sleep. There is no man living, neither king nor emperor, can do more or better, or trust in a better harvest. — Ellis Peters

The best way to get the sweet out of children and escape the bitter is to have them by proxy. — Ellis Peters

God sort all! As doubtless he is doing, now as ever! — Ellis Peters

And are you thinking, Hugh, what I am thinking? — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment! — Ellis Peters

When harried, we go as far as we dare, and with those we're sure of we dare go very far, knowing where forgiveness is certain. — Ellis Peters

I do believe I begin to grasp the nature of miracles! For would it be a miracle, if there was any reason for it? Miracles have nothing to do with reason. Miracles contradict reason, they strike clean across mere human deserts, and deliver and save where they will. If they made sense, they would not be miracles. — Ellis Peters

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

I value devotion and fidelity, and doubt if it matters whether the object falls short. What you do and what you are is what matters. Your loyalty is as sacred as mine. — Ellis Peters

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

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

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. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

It is a time for quietness and prayer. Death is present with us every day of our lives, it behooves us to take note of its nearness, not as a threat, but as our common experience on the way to grace. There is no more to be said. It is better to accept the will of God, and be silent. — Ellis Peters

Only I am sure I met no one on the way, because if I had I should have had to master myself, walk like a woman in her senses, even give a greeting. And when you have to, you can. — Ellis Peters

Every man should be adjudged innocent until there was proof against him, and all the more when very suspect and malicious charges had already been thrown at him, and rang leaden as false coin. — Ellis Peters

Nothing learned is ever quite wasted. — Ellis Peters

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

Innocence is an infinitely fragile thing and thought can sometimes injure, even destroy it. - Pg. 254 — Ellis Peters

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

All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil. — Ellis Peters

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

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

the good sense to fortify himself with the things of the flesh for the struggles of the spirit. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

As roads go, the road home is as good as any. — Ellis Peters

Men drunk with ambition and power do not ground their weapons, nor stop to recognise the fellow-humanity of those they are about to slay. - Pg. 2 — Ellis Peters

Despair is deadly sin, but worse, it is mortal folly. — Ellis Peters

Perhaps thought really is prayer. — Ellis Peters

To have faith in Divine protection is good, but even beter if backed by the pratical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals. — Ellis Peters

I can't forget things that way. There's only one thing for it, and that's to admit everything and accept everything, and find some way of living that doesn't mean always sitting on top of a chest of grudges, trying to keep the lid from opening. — Ellis Peters

In happiness or unhappiness, living is a duty, and must be done thoroughly. — Ellis Peters

Questions are as supple as willow wands, it's easy to brush by them and slip them aside, and no one the worse for it. — Ellis Peters

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

Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired — Ellis Peters

Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems. — Ellis Peters

Murder is murder,as much a curse to the slayer as to the slain, and cannot be a matter of indifference, whoever the dead may be. — Ellis Peters

It's a kind of arrogance to be so certain you're past redemption. — Ellis Peters

In every decision there must be some regrets. — Ellis Peters

What are wits for unless a man uses them? — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

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. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price.
You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple. — Ellis Peters

Too much trust is folly, in an imperfect world. — Ellis Peters

God, nevertheless, required a little help from men, and what he mostly got was hindrance. — Ellis Peters

You cannot demand truth, and then select half and throw the inconvenient remainder away. — Ellis Peters

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

Now have ado with a man! — Ellis Peters

It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions. — Ellis Peters

He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands, — Ellis Peters

If none of us ever fell short, or put a foot astray, everything would be good in this great world, but we stumble and fall, every one. We must deal with what we have. - Cadfael, Pg. 245-6 — Ellis Peters

Meet every man as you find him, for we're all made the same under habit, robe or rags. Some better made than others, and some better cared for, but on the same pattern, all. — Ellis Peters

She was not the audience to which he played, but she was the profound intelligence that heard him. She drew him in with her great bruised eyes, and his music she drank, and it was wine to her thirst. — Ellis Peters

Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it. — Ellis Peters

There's an art in every labour. — Ellis Peters

The ugliness that man can do to man might cast a shadow between you and the certainty of the justice and mercy God can do to him hereafter. It takes half a lifetime to reach the spot where eternity is always visible, and the crude injustice of the hour shrivels out of sight. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

Provable truths are what we need. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

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

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire. — Ellis Peters

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. — Ellis Peters

Official justice does not dig deep, but regards what comes readily to the surface, and draws conclusions accordingly. — Ellis Peters

Of all the reports that fly about the world, ill news is the surest of all to arrive! — Ellis Peters

So Rhun had arrived at the last frontier of belief, and fallen, or emerged, or soared into the region where the soul realises that pain is of no account, that to be within the secret of God is more than well being, and past the power of the tongue to utter. To embrace the decree of pain is to translate it, to shed it like a rain of blessing on others who have not yet understood. — Ellis Peters

You may whisper a word or two to God on my behalf at Matins and Lauds, if you'll be so kind. If he turns a deaf ear to you, small use the rest of us wearing out our knee-bones. — Ellis Peters

The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow. — Ellis Peters

You'll never get to be a saint if you deny the bit of the devil in you. — Ellis Peters

The saint is a good Welshwoman, and knows her countrymen. We are not quick in respect to rank or riches, we do not doff and bow and scrape when any man flaunts himself before us. We are blunt and familiar even in praise. What we value we value in the heart, and — Ellis Peters

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

Oh, sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith. (Br. Cadfael) — Ellis Peters

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

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