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Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.

J. R. R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien
Age: 81 †
Born: 1892
Born: January 3
Died: 1973
Died: September 2
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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
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Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master.
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Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
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Farewell, they cried, Wherever you fare till your eyries receive you at the journey's end! That is the polite thing to say among eagles. May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks, answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.
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Far more often [than asking the question 'Is it true?'] they [children] have asked me: 'Was he good? Was he wicked?' That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie.
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Each of us embodies, in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time & place, universal truth and everlasting life.
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Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!
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deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us but they are gone.
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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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No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.
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Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not Today. Good morning! But please come to tea -any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Good bye!
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I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril.
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It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.
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There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.
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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!
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It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
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Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn. Forth, Eorlingas!
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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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There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.
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Of all the things that men may heed 'Tis most of love they sing indeed.
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There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.
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