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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.

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
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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
Personal
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Purpose
Believe
Life
Unanswerable
God

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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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Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undómiel daughter of Elrond.
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I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to
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The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.
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He [Bilbo] fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.
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Praise from the praise-worthy is beyond all rewards.
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Oh! That was poetry! said Pippin. Do you really mean to start before the break of day?
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Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father! They cried to Thorin. It is long enough without watering it!
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Though here at journey's end I lie In darkness buried deep, Beyond all towers strong and high, Beyond all mountains steep, Above all shadows rides the Sun And Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, Nor bid the Stars farewell.
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Don't the great tales never end? No, they never end as tales, said Frodo. But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.
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I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.
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With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter!
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evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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Go back? he thought. No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go! So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.
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Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.
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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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But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning.
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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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It is plain that we were meant to go together.
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And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
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