Quote

The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow- an Elf!

J. R. R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien
Age: 81 †
Born: 1892
Born: January 3
Died: 1973
Died: September 2
Author
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Linguist
Literary Critic
Military Officer
Poet
Teacher
Translator
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
John R. R. Tolkien
J-R-R Tolkien
Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
Way
Strongest
Grass
Ploughman
Snow
Otter
Seek
Otters
Choose
Plough
Running
Leafs
Light
Leaf
Must
Swimming

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It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.
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Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.
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Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not or that you feel good this morning or that it is a morning to be good on?
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Better mistrust undeserved than rash words.
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Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.
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I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and of people who will see a world that I shall never know.
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I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears.
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My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!
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I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure.
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Who are you, Master?' he asked. 'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?
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It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
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Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
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It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious.
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If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don’t know the recipe but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise.
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Often does hatred hurt itself.
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I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.
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Splendid! They used to go up like great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire and hang in the twilight all evening!
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Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
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Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story.
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You aren't nearly through this adventure yet.
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