Quotes from Jeanne M. Dams

There is sadness and evil in the world, yes. There is also goodness and beauty and justice. The one is as real as the other, and we must keep that fact firmly in mind or lose all sense of proportion.

History does seem to be just one long succession of murders, doesn't it?

Sometime I'll get around to asking why the English nobility have so blasted many names that a conversation about them is like reading a Russian novel. I have a private suspicion it's done on purpose to confuse foreigners.

ONE OF LIFE'S great blessings is that death and tragedy are never allowed to take full possession. Life goes on. People say it bitterly, as if one ought to be occupied solely with the current disaster. In fact we couldn't cope if, in the midst of crisis, people didn't eat and drink and relax a bit and comfort one another.

don't wanna, don't hafta, ain't gonna'.

Oh, but Satan is attractive! Proud and bold and beautiful—the angel of the morning, you know. Evil always has to be gaudier and more glamorous than good, or it wouldn't draw any converts at all.

Adoration brings out the worst in some men.

petit déjeuner

those latitudes, poured out his blessings upon the city. The warm tide of light, paying tribute first to the newer creed, flowed over the topmost cross of the cathedral, washing its cool stone with golden glory, splashing down the spire.

finish the Tom Clancy

taken aback by the bookshops in all the cathedrals; visions of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple sprang to mind.

the institution of afternoon tea is suffering in an England that grows more American every day,

in Sherlock Holmes's day, the Trichinopoly cigar ash helped only if one of the suspects smoked Trichinopoly cigars.

Aha!" I snapped my fingers, not realizing I had spoken aloud until I saw the glare on the face of the elderly passing clergyman. In his day—a very long time ago, that was—women did not go about getting sudden ideas in the Cathedral Close. It wasn't done. He sniffed and turned his back.

transept leading to the old cloister. The cloister itself, save for part of the old scriptorium and the boundary walls, had fallen to ruin centuries ago after the dissolution of the abbeys, leaving only a few moss-covered stumps of arches to bear witness to Henry VIII's devastation.

My mother had a philosophy that guided her through many a rough time. 'Only worry when you can do something about it--whatever it is. Then it's not worry, it's thinking things through, trying to decide what's best. When there's nothing you can do, it's just plain worry, and it's pointless and self-destructive.

That's the difference between you and them, between any person of integrity and any criminal. You wanted to do harm, but you didn't. The restraints held. That's what civilization is... That's what morality is. Maybe we can't always keep our emotions in check, but so long as we control our actions, we'll stay on the right side of the line.

the communion solemnly moving. As I made my way back from the altar rail I reveled in the exalted sense of goodwill that one always hopes will last. It never does, of course.

I am one of those women with a regrettable tendency to take on the responsibilities of the world. Regrettable, because it leads to meddling in what's really none of my business and endless fretting that wears me out without accomplishing anything. I suppose I like to feel I'm indispensable, which nobody is. It's a form of egotism, a superiority complex, perhaps.

Every single roundabout I come to is going to have five ways out of it, to Little Puddleby, and Upper Slaughter, and Something Parva,

I skimmed. The Rev'd Canon Jonathan Billings . . . wound to the head (I shuddered and passed over

les moules — comment dit-on—?

me we're right back where we started. We

pleased as a dog with two tails.