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Shadowfax tossed his head and cried aloud, as if a trumpet had summoned him to battle. Then he sprang forward. Fire flew from his feet; night rushed over him. As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Over the field rang his clear voice calling: ‘Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!
J. R. R. Tolkien
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Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
I cannot,' said Merry. 'I have never seen them. I have never been outside of my own land before. And if I had known what the world outside was like, I don't think I should have had the heart to leave it.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
If you sit on the doorstep long enough, I daresay you will think of something.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn!
J. R. R. Tolkien -
I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate And though I oft have passed them by A day will come at last when I Shall take the hidden paths that run West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Journey’s end In western lands beneath the Sun The flowers may rise in Spring, The trees may bud, the waters run, The merry finches sing. Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night, And swaying branches bear The Elven-stars as jewels white Amid their branching hair. Though here at journey's end I lie In darkness buried deep, Beyond all towers strong and high, Beyond all mountains steep, Above all shadows rides the Sun And Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, Nor bid the Stars farewell.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Far more often than asking the question 'Is it true?' Children have asked me: 'Was he good? Was he wicked?' That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ... Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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The war made me poignantly aware of the beauty of the world.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them. Filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present : like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don’t know, but I t felt as if something that grew in the ground—asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between roof-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
That was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and strive for patience, if you can.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Do not spoil the wonder with haste!
J. R. R. Tolkien -
If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim.I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept none for myself.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
J. R. R. Tolkien -
Memory is not what the heart desires.
J. R. R. Tolkien