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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.

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
Mind
Dreading
Publication
Exposed
Shot
Shots
Impossible
Heart

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We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.
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If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.
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But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?
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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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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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For victory is victory, however small, nor is its worth only from what follows from it.
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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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Mind your P's and Q's.
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Trolls simply detest the very sight of dwarves (uncooked).
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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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Now I know what a piece of bacon feels like when it is suddenly picked out of the pan on a fork and put back on the shelf! No you don't! he heard Dori answering, because the bacon knows that it will get back in the pan sooner or later and it is to be hoped we shan't. Also eagles aren't forks!
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I wish life was not so short. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.
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Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.
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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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Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.
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Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
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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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And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy?
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The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet it is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
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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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