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Quotes from Ellis Peters

in the pearly light of a clear, still dawn. March had come in more lamb than lion, there were windflowers in the woods, and the first primroses, unburned by frost, undashed and unmired by further rain, were just opening.
~ Ellis Peters
What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself.
~ Ellis Peters
more impenetrable solitudes
~ Ellis Peters
The thing about fear," said Cadfael, seriously considering, "is that it is pointless. When need arises, fear is forgotten.
~ Ellis Peters
Rue, sage, rosemary, gilvers, gromwell, ginger, mint, thyme, columbine, herb of grace, savoury, mustard, every manner of herb grew here, fennel, tansy, basil and dill, parsley, chervil and marjoram. He had taught the uses even of the unfamiliar
~ Ellis Peters
make medicines against pain, the chief enemy of man. Pain, and the absence of sleep, which is the most beneficent remedy for pain.
~ Ellis Peters
this was an ageless voice that might have belonged to a child or an angel. Blessed be the human condition, thought Cadfael, which allows us marred and fallible creatures who are neither angels nor children to make sounds like these, that belong in another world. Unlooked for mercies, undeserved grace!
~ Ellis Peters
and seriously considered whether a man was really better for reading anything at all, let alone these labyrinthine works of theology that served only to make the clear and bright seem muddied and dim, by clothing everything they touched in words obscure and shapeless as mist, far out of the comprehension of ordinary men, of whom the greater part of the human creation is composed.
~ Ellis Peters
God sort all! As doubtless he is doing, now as ever!
~ Ellis Peters
Rather a tremor on the air than an audible sound.
~ Ellis Peters
he thought of songbirds caged, drooping without air to play on the cords of their throats, without heart to sing, and knew that they might very well die.
~ Ellis Peters
The disease of mortality is in us from the womb, from the day of our birth we are on the way to our death.
~ Ellis Peters
The disease of mortality is in us from the womb, from the day of our birth we are on the way to our death. What matters is how we conduct the journey.
~ Ellis Peters
One Corpse Too Many
~ Ellis Peters
Miracles have nothing to do with reason. Miracles contradict reason, they strike clean across mere human deserts, and deliver and save where they will.
~ Ellis Peters
God resolves all given time
~ Ellis Peters
There's an art in every labour.
~ Ellis Peters
A soft wind from the west blew in through the open window, and Haluin lifted his head and sniffed the air like a high-bred horse scenting his stable. "How good it is," he said, "to be going home!
~ 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 that we expect and demand.
~ Ellis Peters
may look and enjoy, just as I do in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It's no blame to men if they try to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.
~ Ellis Peters
He has never gone short of anything he wanted, you see, until he wanted me.
~ Ellis Peters
When you have done everything else, perfecting a conventual herb-garden is a fine and satisfying thing to do. He could not conceive of coming to this stasis having done nothing else whatever.
~ Ellis Peters
Cleverness and wisdom are not inevitable yoke-fellows.
~ Ellis Peters
But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.
~ Ellis Peters