Top 80 Ellis Peters Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “Love shared is no sin.”

— Ellis Peters

52. “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 before, but had just been shown by God how to do it, and tried, and found the impossible possible.”

— Ellis Peters

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

— Ellis Peters

54. “Now have ado with a man!”

— Ellis Peters

55. “The lodging arrangements had certainly been inspired, though whether by an angel or an imp remained to be seen.”

— Ellis Peters

56. “Beauty is a perilous gift...”

— Ellis Peters

57. “And who knows, thought Cadfael, which is in the right, the young man who sees the best in all, and trusts all, or the old one who suspects all until he has probed them through and through? The one may stumble into a snare now and then, but at least enjoy sunshine along the way, between falls. The other may never miss his footing, but seldom experience joy. Better find a way somewhere between!”

— Ellis Peters

58. “Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired.”

— Ellis Peters

59. “When I want to hear my echo,” said Brother Cadfael, “I will at least speak first.”

— Ellis Peters

60. “In every decision there must be some regrets.”

— Ellis Peters

61. “But there comes a time when the old grow very tired, and the load of leadership unjustly heavy to bear. And perhaps – perhaps! – Heribert would not be quite so sad as even he now supposed, if the load should be lifted from him.”

— Ellis Peters

62. “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

63. “On the fine, bright morning in early May when the whole sensational affair of the Gwytherin relics may properly be considered to have begun, Brother Cadfael had been up long before Prime, pricking out cabbage seedlings before the day was aired, and his thoughts were all on birth, growth and fertility, not at all on graves and reliquaries and violent deaths, whether of saints, sinners or ordinary decent, fallible men like himself.”

— Ellis Peters

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

— Ellis Peters

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

— Ellis Peters

66. “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

67. “Beware how you pass judgment on your superiors,” he said mildly, “at least until you know how to put yourself in their place and see from their view.”

— Ellis Peters

68. “He goes back to his childhood, as old men do.”

— Ellis Peters

69. “Official justice does not dig deep, but regards what comes readily to the surface, and draws conclusions accordingly.”

— Ellis Peters

70. “Even the very system of bishoprics galled the devout adherents of the old, saintly Celtic church, that had no worldly trappings, courted no thrones, but rather withdrew from the world into the blessed solitude of thought and prayer.”

— Ellis Peters

71. “God does indeed forbid,” said Radulfus drily, “that we should make more of our virtues or our failings than is due. More than your due you shall not have of, neither praise nor blame. For.”

— Ellis Peters

72. “You cannot be of high Norman blood, and not excel! Brother Cadfael felt for any such victims as found themselves in this trap, coming as he did, of antique Welsh stock without superhuman pretensions.”

— Ellis Peters

73. “The river was gilded in every ripple with capricious, scintillating light.”

— Ellis Peters

74. “Dublin of the Danish kings.”

— Ellis Peters

75. “Thank God I didn’t make the mistake of suggesting it to him, thought Cadfael devoutly. There’s nothing the young hate and resent so much as to be urged to a good act, when they’ve already made the virtuous resolve on their own account.”

— Ellis Peters

76. “Then sleep easy,” said Cadfael, “for God is awake.”

— Ellis Peters

77. “Whatever the rights or wrongs of their affection, in the teeth of danger and despair love is entitled to speak its mind, and all others should be blind and deaf.”

— Ellis Peters

78. “You are looking at a murdered man, Father Prior. A man’s hand fitted that arrow, a man’s hand drew the bow, and for a man’s reason. There must have been others who had a grudge against Rhisiart, others whose plans he was obstructing, besides Saint Winifred. Why blame this killing on her?”

— Ellis Peters

79. “Time to talk over every day of the time they had been apart, time to reach the companionable silences when all that needed to be said was said. And all this the gift of Brother Mark. Wonderful what riches a man can bestow who by choice and vocation possesses nothing! The world is full of small, beneficent miracles.”

— Ellis Peters

80. “Cleverness and wisdom are not inevitable yoke-fellows.”

— Ellis Peters

81. “But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we’re humankind, and not angels.”

— Ellis Peters

82. “The grace of God is not endangered by the follies or the wickedness of men.”

— Ellis Peters

83. “Thinking is best after prayer, but will be none the worse for a meal and a glass of wine.”

— Ellis Peters

84. “There is a certain unbending rigidity about Augustine that offers little compassion to anyone with whom he disagrees. Cadfael was never going to surrender his private reservations about any reputed saint who could describe humankind as a mass of corruption and sin proceeding inevitably towards death, or one who could look upon the world, for all its imperfections, and find it irredeemably evil.”

— Ellis Peters

85. “She looked from his face into the face of the dead man. She knew he was dead. She also knew that the dead speak, often in thunder.”

— Ellis Peters

86. “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