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Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.

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
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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
Action
Shapes
Antiquity
Earth
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Purely
Different
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Wholly
World
Impossible
Masses
Middle
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Though
Period
Continental

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Better mistrust undeserved than rash words.
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Over hill and under hill
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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.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent.
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Wraiths! Wraiths on wings!
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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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Faithful heart may have froward tongue.
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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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End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
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And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don't want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think! Good Heavens! said Pippin. At breakfast?
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This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name which is wise, and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal which is also very wise. No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time to trying to understand it.
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We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things.
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It is plain that we were meant to go together.
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I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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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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After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.
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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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The world was fair, the mountains tall In Elder Days before the fall.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter.
J. R. R. Tolkien