Quotes from Stephen R. Lawhead

When iniquity sits in the judgement seat, good men must take their appeals to a higher court.

You worry too much, Tuck." "And you not enough, Rhi Bran.

sun-dappled hillside could provoke such powerful feelings? In this radiant paradise of a world I felt deeply the privation of years of wandering through life blind to the beauty around me.

See here, if we can establish an affinity with the eternal, ever-living Creator, then is it not likely that this affinity, this relationship, if you like, will endure beyond the death of the material body?

Albion was many times larger in every way than the tidily compacted Britain I had left behind. Judging from the distances traveled, Albion was immense; both the land and the world that contained it were far more expansive than anything I could have dreamed.

Unlike the tedious priests of Mithras and Minerva—so careful, so exact, so smug in the enactment of their obscure rituals—old Potitus saw no need to weary heaven with ceaseless ceremony or meaningless repetition. "God knows the cry of our hearts," he would say, "before it ever reaches our lips. So speak it out and have done with it. Then get about your business." My

If you must always defeat two enemies each time you take the field of battle, you will soon be overcome. And of any two enemies, anger is always the stronger.

Cling too tightly to your life and you will lose it, my reluctant warrior. You must become the master of your life, not its slave.

For the scholar no effort is ever wasted.

There was a rightness to things that surpassed understanding, but she knew beyond all doubt that in each and every circumstance her feet had been guided along this path and to this place. A favourite saying in China—which she had heard on occasion from her own grandmother—was that the threads of life are easy to weave, but difficult to untangle.

Because all the things you did not do cannot exist for you. Only the path that you chose exists as reality for you.

Just when I begin to imagine I have achieved some pinnacle of understanding, reached the summit of the highest climb . . . I scramble the last few feet to the top only to see that I have merely gained a foothold on a narrow plateau and that entire new mountain ranges rise before me, serried ranks of peaks, each one higher than the last.

Had he but known that before the day was over he would discover the hidden dimensions of the universe, Kit might have been better prepared. At least, he would have brought an umbrella.

An artist must be pure of heart," said Gerdes, "for true art is the expression of the artist's innermost being. To create beauty, one must be beautiful"—she pressed her hands to her bosom—"in here, in your heart of hearts.

If you can see the shape of things to come,' he says, 'and then put yourself into what you see, you will find yourself there.

It is not easy to keep the flame of hope burning in the cold, empty heart of Sollen. The Season of Snows is not the time to make bright plans for the future. One slow foot in front of the other—that was all the future I knew. Just one more step, and then one more . . . I cared about nothing else.

The land is alive. It draws its life from the people who work it, just as they draw their life from the king. If corruption taints the king, the people suffer—yes, and eventually, the land will suffer as well. That is the way of it.

Then again, what Cosimo had said was right: he was nothing but an overworked drone in a cube farm, a minor cog in the dreary machinery of a third-rate mortgage mill, overlooked, unloved, a sidelined player in the big game

For if there was to be any transformation in the spiritual orientation of the pilgrim's soul, that change would take place not on arrival as if by magic, but in the long, hard work of The Way.

For the more words I had for things, the better I could frame my thoughts, the more vivid my thoughts became. Awareness deepened, consciousness sharpened.

The long and painstakingly detailed discussions seemed to me nothing more than the incessant nattering of toads in a water filled ditch and of no greater consequence.

That is what the boats and birds and children symbolized: creatures at rest within themselves and in harmony with their environment. Not fighting it, but accepting it, shaping it and being shaped by it to live in it and beyond it.

Every religious figure in history achieved enlightenment between the ages of twenty-five and thirtyfive. That seems to be when human consciousness comes fully into its own and acquires a finer spiritual perception. Perhaps it simply takes that long to develop. In any case, it's a well-documented phenomenon. Look it up sometime.

If I had ever nurtured any notions of nobility, bravery, courage, dignity, or the like, these exalted qualities were embodied in the faces I saw. Clear-eyed, firm-jawed, virile, strong, and proud— they were the living embodiments of every red-blooded boy's childhood fantasy of glorious manhood: heroism incarnate. That they were going to kill me seemed a thing of piddling consequence.