Ellis Peters famous quotes

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.
-- Ellis Peters

#Nature #Spring #Contentment

Beauty is a perilous gift ...
-- Ellis Peters

#Beauty

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

#Despair #Sin #Folly

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

#Receiving #Benefits #Favors

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

#Hate #Odds #Reason

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

#Home

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

#Men #Illusion #Wounds

Integrity expects integrity.
-- Ellis Peters

#Integrity

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

#Home #Circles #Half

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

#Travel #Holiday #Spots

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

#Trust #World #Too Much

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

#Truth #Half #Demand

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

#Heart #Quality #Youth

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

#Devil #Saint #Deny

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

#News #World #Ill

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

#Saint #May #Retrospect

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

#Thinking #Passing #Passings

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

#Heaven #Have Faith #Protection

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

#Courage #Truth #Evil

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

#Truth #Light #Way

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

#Years #People #Gold

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

#Men #Use #Wit

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

#Problem #Truth Is #Masters

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

#Believe #Miracle #Desert

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

#May #Bitter #Substitutes

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

#Giving Up #People #Enemy

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

#Reflection #Men #Thinking

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

#Talking #Voice #Usual

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

#Regret #Simple #Done

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

#Beautiful #Running #Thinking

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

#Brother #Soul #Elbows

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

#Hero #Expectations #Coward

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

#Evil #Use #Misuse

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

#Christian

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

#Fall #Ends #Values

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

#Men #Thinking #Names

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

#Men #Faces #Be Prepared

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

#Men #Dedication #Giving