The Holy Thief Quotes

“Brother Cadfael was standing in the middle of his walled herb-garden, looking pensively about him at the autumnal visage of his pleasance, where all things grew gaunt, wiry and sombre. Most of the leaves were fallen, the stems dark and clenched like fleshless fingers holding fast to the remnant of the summer, all the fragrances gathered into one scent of age and decline, still sweet, but with the damp, rotting sweetness of harvest over and decay setting in. It was not yet very cold, the mild melancholy of November still had lingering gold in it, in falling leaves and slanting amber light. All the apples were in the loft, all the corn milled, the hay long stacked, the sheep turned into the stubble fields. A time to pause, to look round, to make sure nothing had been neglected, no fence unrepaired, against the winter. He had never before been quite so acutely”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“he”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“Justice is surely due to the innocent, by even stronger right than retribution to the guilty.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“more impenetrable solitudes,”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“worn to cobweb fragility, like the skins of very old men, that bruise and stain at the mere brushing of the breeze, and flower into brown blotches as the leaves into rotting gold. The colours of late autumn are the colours of the sunset: the farewell of the year and the farewell of the day. And of the life of man? Well, if it ends in a flourish of gold, that is no bad ending.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“aware of the particular quality and function of November, its ripeness and its hushed sadness. The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men, thought Cadfael, believe in that new beginning, but experience only the ending. It may be that God is reminding me that I am approaching my November. Well, why regret it? November has beauty, has seen the harvest into the barns, even laid by next year’s seed. No need to fret about not being allowed to stay and sow it, someone else will do that. So go contentedly into the earth with the moist, gentle, skeletal leaves,”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“Brother Cadfael was standing in the middle of his walled herb-garden, looking pensively”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“the old, less rigidly organized Christianity of the Celtic Church lingered stubbornly there, even though the Roman rite had prevailed. They would accept a runaway novice, all the more when they heard him sing and play; they would provide him a patron and a house harp, and strip him of his skirts and find him chausses and shirt and cotte in payment for his music.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“he thought of songbirds caged, drooping without air to play on the cords of their throats, without heart to sing, and knew that they might very well die.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“this was an ageless voice that might have belonged to a child or an angel. Blessed be the human condition, thought Cadfael, which allows us marred and fallible creatures who are neither angels nor children to make sounds like these, that belong in another world. Unlooked for mercies, undeserved grace!”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“gather the white blossoms of the blackthorn, just out of the bud and at their best for infusing, to make a gentle purge for the old men in the infirmary, who could no longer take the strenuous exercise that had formerly kept their bodies in good trim. A very fine plant, the blackthorn, good for almost anything that ailed a man’s insides, providing bud and flower and bitter black fruit were all taken at their best. Good in the hedges, too, for keeping cattle and sheep out of planted places.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“in the pearly light of a clear, still dawn. March had come in more lamb than lion, there were windflowers in the woods, and the first primroses, unburned by frost, undashed and unmired by further rain, were just opening.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“Robert Bossu they called him, Robert the Hunchback,”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“Robert Beaumont, earl of Leicester”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief

“She was not the audience to which he played, but she was the profound intelligence that heard him. She drew him in with her great bruised eyes, and his music she drank, and it was wine to her thirst.”
― Ellis Peters, The Holy Thief