Ellis Peters

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

“There's an art in every labour.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”