J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

Ultimately we've only got humanity to work with. It's only clay we've got.

J. R. R. Tolkien

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• Humanity
• Clay

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Quotes to Explore

• I think I was lucky I got into art college. That's what saved me.

  

  Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • Think
  • Me
  • College

• The only thing worse than an active conscience is one that's retroactive.

  

  Harold Coffin
  • Conscience
  • Active
  • Worse

• I've always been proud that my name stands for peace.

  

  Paloma Picasso
  • Peace
  • Proud
  • Name

• I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.

  

  Gary Carr
  • Life
  • World
  • Great

• Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass - you don't see it, but somehow it does something.

  

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger
  • Culture
  • You
  • See

• In my next life, I want to be a housecat. Naps all the time!

  

  Laura Anne Gilman
  • Life
  • Time
  • Want

• He's really sort of the devil. He's completely emotionally detached. He has no empathy. You find that in psychopaths. It's about power with Voldemort. It's an aphrodisiac for him. Power makes him feel alive.

  

  Ralph Fiennes
  • Power
  • Devil
  • Empathy

• The most important thing for me is to walk the little alleys of the city, to find the little alcove where someone is cooking something, and just watch them do it. That's my idea of fun.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • Important
  • Fun
  • City

• Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.

  

  Zig Ziglar
  • Time
  • Enemy
  • Goals

• For me, to just have my own shoe is unbelievable. As a kid, you see Jordans and wonder what that feels like to have your own shoe, and the fact that I have one is really surreal.

  

  Calvin Johnson
  • Me
  • Wonder
  • Shoe

• Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

  

  Fiona Shaw
  • Time
  • Acting
  • Misery

• With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I've come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Fun
  • Taken
  • Regret

• Horses and horsepower alike are about status and being cool.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Cool
  • Being
  • Status

• If I'm saying a universal truth, but maybe it's something that people don't feel comfortable saying... It's a strange take, but at the same time, what you're hitting on is kind of right. You can relate. That's the heart of comedy. You have to have a point of view. You gotta commit. And the more you commit to it, sometimes the funnier it gets.

  

  Vince Vaughn
  • People
  • Time
  • Heart

• The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

  

  Van Wyck Brooks
  • War
  • Man
  • Creative

• We sat around and I fed them barbecue and whiskey. And pretty soon everyone started to compete with each other on the guitars. It seemed the more everyone drank and ate, the more everyone got into it.

  

  Gary Allan
  • Pretty
  • Everyone
  • Whiskey

• I want to be like Robin Williams, really. It's all the different characters he does, all the different voices.

  

  Karen Gillan
  • Different
  • Want
  • Like

• This is very intriguing to think we should audit the Fed, but I discovered that probably if they audited the Fed, it would get a clean bill because it's undoubtedly doing exactly what it's supposed to do according to the law.

  

  G. Edward Griffin
  • Think
  • Law
  • Doing

• We need to focus our energies there, not these broad, blanket, kind of statements that will make it harder for us to deal with ISIS. We need to deal with ISIS in the caliphate. We need a strategy to destroy ISIS there. You can't do that without the cooperation of the Muslim world because they're as threatened as we are.

  

  Jeb Bush
  • World
  • Focus

• Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.

  

  Jacob Bronowski
  • Work
  • God
  • Thinking

• All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy.

  

  Jerry Saltz
  • Work
  • Art
  • War

• All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.

  

  Colin R. Davis
  • Work

• Songwriting is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and it doesn't make any sense until you find that last piece. It has to make sense or it doesn't work.

  

  Chrissie Hynde Pretenders
  • Work
  • Songwriting
  • Piece

• Ultimately we've only got humanity to work with. It's only clay we've got.

  

  J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Work
  • Humanity
  • Clay