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Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.

J. R. R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien
Age: 81 †
Born: 1892
Born: January 3
Died: 1973
Died: September 2
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
John R. R. Tolkien
J-R-R Tolkien
Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
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If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
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Better mistrust undeserved than rash words.
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False hopes are more dangerous than fears.
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At my age I'm exactly the kind of person who has lived through one of the most quickly changing periods known to history. Surely there could never be in seventy years so much change.
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There is no ship now that can bear me hence
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Far more often [than asking the question 'Is it true?'] they [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.
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Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?
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It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.
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I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
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I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.
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And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
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All that is gold does not glitter.
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Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
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You cannot pass, he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.
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The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.
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The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.
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Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.
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There are many things in the deep waters and seas and lands may change. And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.
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The world was fair, the mountains tall In Elder Days before the fall.
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