All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.
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 we expect and demand.
So, wonder! I also wonder about you," said Cadfael mildly. "Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?
Perhaps thought really is prayer.
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,...
Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.
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...
Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.
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.
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.
It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.
Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.
Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.
Well, a man can but hold fast to what he believes right, and even the opponent he baulks should value him for that.
He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands,
Well, you can fairly claim the day hasn't been wasted,' owned Cadfael generously, 'if something's been learned.
Murder is murder,as much a curse to the slayer as to the slain, and cannot be a matter of indifference, whoever the dead may be.
Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems.
There is in the end no remedy but truth. It is the one course that cannot be evil.
Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light.
Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid.
