Ellis Peters Quotes
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They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.
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You'll never get to be a saint if you deny the bit of the devil in you.
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Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.
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Life goes not in a straight line, lad, but in a circle. The first half we spend venturing as far as the world's end from home and kin and stillness, and the latter half brings us back, by roundabout ways but surely, to that state from which we set out.
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Despair is deadly sin, but worse, it is mortal folly.
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Of all the reports that fly about the world, ill news is the surest of all to arrive!
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Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems.
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I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire.
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If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?" "Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.
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Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired
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Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out the passing day and put away to think of afterwards.
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A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.
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The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.
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the success of a holiday depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you.
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Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.
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To have faith in Divine protection is good, but even beter if backed by the pratical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals.
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Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.
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Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.
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Beauty is a perilous gift.
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Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light.
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All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.
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Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.
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There is in the end no remedy but truth. It is the one course that cannot be evil.
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Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.