The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tiger, one of those wild savage beasts… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
If you don't know where you're going, you'll wind up somewhere else. Not all those who wander are lost. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Much of the same sort of degraded and filthy talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt,… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Many are the strange chances of the world, and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
