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Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts. (Ghan-buri-Ghan, of allies during war)

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
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Literary Critic
Military Officer
Poet
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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
Gifts
Dead
Friends
Living
War
Give
Giving
Men
Allies

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What punishments of God are not gifts?
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For the less even as for the greater there is some deed that he may accomplish but once only and in that deed his heart shall rest.
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The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there shoreless seas and stars uncounted beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.
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Trolls simply detest the very sight of dwarves (uncooked).
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Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt.
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We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting' talk and chat and prefer 'speech' and 'discourse' well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the 'worthy, brave and courteous men' of long ago.
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I don't see why the likes o' thee Without axin' leave should go makin' free With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin So hand the old bone over! Rover! Trover! Though dead he be, it belongs to he So hand the old bnone over!
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If people were in the habit of refering to 'King George's council, Winston and his gang,' it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy.
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Often does hatred hurt itself.
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We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!
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And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.
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Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool! he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. You aren't nearly through this adventure yet, he added, and that was pretty true as well.
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I am a Christian…so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.
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Evidently we look so much alike that your desire to make an incurable dent in my hat must be excused.
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Eastward the dawn rose, ridge behind ridge into the morning, and vanished out of eyesight into guess it was no more than a glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of the memory and old tales, of the high and distant mountains.
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grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.
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The only just literary critic, he concluded, is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed.
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After some while Bilbo became impatient. Well, what is it? he said. The answer's not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think by the noise you are making.
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How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold.
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