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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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Don't tell us about dreams – dream dinners aren't any good and we can't share them.
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There are many things in the deep waters and seas and lands may change. And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.
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My Precious, my Precious.
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If we all got angry together something might be done.
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it was easier to believe in the Dragon and less easy to believe in Thorin in these wild parts
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Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep for not all tears are an evil.
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If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at others' asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kin of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardners be in high hounour.
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There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.
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Ho! Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo! By water, wood and hill, by reed and willow, By fire, sun and moon, harken now and hear us! Come, Tom Bombadil, for our need is near us!
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You are a set of deceitful scoundrels! But bless you! I give in. I will take Gildor's advice. If the danger were not so dark, I should dance for joy. Even so, I cannot help feeling happy happier than I have felt for a long time.
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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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In one thing you have not changed, dear friend, said Aragorn: you still speak in riddles. What? In riddles? said Gandalf. No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.
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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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Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.
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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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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.
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My dear Frodo!’ exclaimed Gandalf. ‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.
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There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
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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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Evidently we look so much alike that your desire to make an incurable dent in my hat must be excused.
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