ŷ������

“I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side resorts, have done their worst), and especially the Welsh language.”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained ‘righteous��, but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for ‘good��, and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).

[The draft ends here. In the margin Tolkien wrote: ‘Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left “good�� clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.’]

Letter 246
From a letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar (drafts)”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“I have at last got busy about Mummy's grave. . . . . The inscription I should like is:

EDITH MARY TOLKIEN
1889-1971
��ú�ٳ󾱱��

:brief and jejune, except for ��ú�ٳ󾱱��, which says for me more than a multitude of words: for she was (and knew she was) my ��ú�ٳ󾱱��. �� I never called Edith ��ú�ٳ󾱱�� �� but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion.

Letter 340
From a letter to Christopher Tolkien”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“The cosmic battle being worked out between God and the Devil takes place in the lives of God's creatures, fallen though they are. They are His chosen instruments.
Were the Rohirrim destined to come at just that moment? Yes. Were they free people? Yes. Were they more or less free because they were stepping...into their destiny? More. If God has prepared good works for us to walk in, then it is a joy and a wonder to walk in them.
If God is working in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure, then it is our delight and our fulfillment to realize that we are doing exactly what was planned for us to do all along. ”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings

“It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened��, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded of him �� so incapable of being ‘invented�� by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am�� (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father�� (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life��. We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences.

Letter 250
To Michael Tolkien”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

Letter 310
To Camilla Unwin
[As part of a school project to write and ask: ‘What is the purpose of life?’]”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness,
nor the warrior for his glory.
I love only that which they defend”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, 두개의탑

“O futuro, bom ou mau, não foi esquecido, mas deixou de ter qualquer poder sobre o presente.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, A Sociedade do Anel

“For the Inklings, language is not a communication tool but rather a portal into being �� an invisible reality summoned into our world through the shape and sound of words. Properly speaking, words are incantations.”
― Eugene Terekhin, Eleven Hidden Gems in the Works of the Inklings: The "Music of Iluvatar" in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield

“The most improper job of any man is bossing other men.
Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Üç Yüzük göğün altında yaşayan Elf Kralları'na
Yedisi taştan saraylarında Cüce Hükümdarla'a
Dokuz Yüzük Ölümlü İnsanlar'a,ölecekler ne yazık
Bir yüzük gölgeler içindeki Mordor Diyarı'nda
Kara tahtında oturan Karanlıklar Efendisi'ne
Hepsine hükmedecek Bir Yüzük, hepsini o bulacak
Hepsini bir araya getirip karanlıkta birbirine bağlayacak
Gölgeler içindeki Mordor Diyarı'nda”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowshipof the Ring

“You thought I remained in Meduseld bent like an old tree under winter snow. So it was when you rode to war. But a west wind has shaken the boughs,' said Théoden. 'Give this man a fresh horse! Let us ride to the help of Erkenbrand!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers : Being the Second Part of the Lord of the Rings

“In seven hours the glory of each tree waxed to full and waned again to naught; and each awoke once more to life an hour before the other ceased to shine.”
― Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R.;Tolkien

“In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: ‘this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty��. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: ‘this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy��; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“For you are the heir of the ages. You have not to grope after the dazzling brilliance of invention of the free adjective, to which all human language has not yet fully attained. You may say

green sun
or dead life

and set the imagination leaping.
Language has both strengthened imagination and been freed by it. Who shall say whether the free adjective has created images bizarre and beautiful, or the adjective been freed by strange and beautiful pictures in the mind?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose �� an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king �� that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not �� unless it was built before our time.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“[O]ne must feel a grave disquiet, when the legitimate inspiration is not there; when the subject or topic of ‘research�� is imposed, or is ‘found�� for a candidate out of someone else’s bag of curiosities, or is thought by a committee to be a sufficient exercise for a degree. Whatever may have been found useful in other spheres, there is a distinction between accepting the willing labour of many humble persons in building an English house and the erection of a pyramid with the sweat of degree-slaves.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“In any case, the expression ‘real life�� in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more ‘alive�� than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more ‘real�� than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!

For my part, I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley station is more ‘real�� than the clouds. And as an artefact I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven. The bridge to platform 4 is to me less interesting than Bifröst guarded by Heimdall with the Gjallarhorn. From the wildness of my heart I cannot exclude the question whether railway-engineers, if they had been brought up on more fantasy, might not have done better with all their abundant means than they commonly do.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“I najobičnija stvar ima svoju draž, ako je krijemo pred drugima.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien

“It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet again.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Saruman is the most contemporary figure in Middle-earth, both politically and linguistically. He is on the road to ‘doublethink�� (which Orwell was to invent, or describe, at almost exactly the same time).”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“[Tolkien's] rejection of mere militarism, his recognition that there are other qualities than those of a warrior or a general, backs up his claim that Gondor is a more reflective society, and one with a longer history, than the Riddermark. The claim is also tacitly demonstrated by Faramir’s capacity for subtlety, understatement, a reverence for truth which nevertheless includes a relatively oblique approach to it, well beyond Éomer’s blunt aggressions and withdrawals.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“Man deÞ swa he byÞ Þonne he mot swa he wile, ‘A man does as he is when he can do what he wants��, and what this means is that power reveals character, not that it alters it.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“. . . Tolkien disliked vague allegories, allegories which didn’t work, though he accepted them readily in their proper place, which was either advancing an argument (as in the Beowulf example) or else constructing brief and personal fables . . .”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“I think that many confuse ‘applicability�� with ‘allegory��; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“One sees ‘Sandyman’s disease�� in an advanced form in Saruman: it starts as intellectual curiosity, develops as engineering skill, turns into greed and the desire to dominate, corrupts further into a hatred and contempt of the natural world which goes beyond any rational desire to use it.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“Sarumans of the real world rule by deluding their followers with images of a technological Paradise in the future, a modernist Utopia; but what one often gets (and this has become only more relevant since Tolkien wrote and since he died) are the blasted landscapes of Eastern Europe, strip-mined, polluted, and even radioactive.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“Inside The Lord of the Rings, the horn of Rohan stands for a rejection of the despair which is Sauron’s chief weapon, and which hangs persistently on the edges of the story, in the barrow, in the Dead Marshes, in Fangorn Forest, in Mordor, and even in the Shire. Outside The Lord of the Rings, it stands maybe for The Lord of the Rings. If Tolkien were to choose a symbol for his story and its message, it would be, I think, the horn of Eorl. He would have liked to blow it in his own country, and disperse the cloud of post-war and post-faith disillusionment, depression, acquiescence, which so strangely (and twice in his lifetime) followed on victory. And perhaps he did.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“Tolkien could at any time, and without trying, have rewritten any of his supposedly archaic passages either in really archaic language, in Middle English or Old English, or in completely normal demotic contemporary slang.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“Tolkien could bring a modern style into Middle-earth: Smaug talks it, for one, and so does Saruman. But he knew the implications of style, and of language, better and more professionally than almost anyone in the world. The flexibility of his many styles and languages; the resonance of the highest levels of these; the ability to reach out towards universal and mythic meaning, while remaining embedded in story: these are three powerful and largely unsuspected reasons for the continuing appeal of The Lord of the Rings.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century