Quotes from Edith Pargeter

A dead eagle he might have buried, but he had chosen rather to light a fire for a phoenix.

What is there, Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men's ears?

Learn humility, while there's yet time--': those were the last of the abbot's words he had waited to hear. All very well, he thought, to be humble in accepting one's own pain and deprivation, perhaps, but what right have I, what right has he, to make a virtue of meekness when it will be Adam who suffers? I call that cheap humility.

The habit of questioning everything can be dangerous, for sooner or later it will surely bring a man into head-on collision with the unquestionable, and he will not be able in conscience to draw aside.

This new approach, it seemed, was not to be made so publicly, not to be exposed to the expedient treason of little devious minds far removed from the battlefields on which honest men met, and contended, and killed one another without malice.

He sat staring before him, seeing nothing but a long line of Mortimers, inexhaustable and prolific to the end of time.

Not his match! And have you not the heart in you to be anything but best? How many are his match? How many in this world do you think stand in the front rank? Are all the rest of us to give up and sit on our hands rather than serve humbly where we deserve?

There's nothing in this world within arm's-length of possibility that can not be done, when a man must.

It seemed to him that something which had always contained and confined him was broken, that he was loosed from it for ever; but whether he came forth into freedom or exile was something he could not determine.

Love with her would be a field of action, not a need. She was complete whether she won or lost the world. She was her own fortress and her own sanctuary.

The dispensations of God are always just,' he said. 'We get the sons we deserve.

Should I come to you, Father, with anything that made me ashamed? What do I matter? What's honour to me? My honour is to keep her from harm and from grief. I have no other; I want none.

He could not be a breaker, it was against his bent.

for no border severs man from man, or one manner of living totally from another.

If you cannot imagine pain fully, neither can you fully imagine the resources you have in you to meet it and overcome it.

Do you think you're the only one groping? We're all in the dark together. Wait until God please to clear the sky.

Have you no errand I can do for you in hell?' he said. 'There's cleaner company there.