Some sang too that Thror and Thrain would come back one day and gold would flow in rivers, through the mountain-gates, and all that land would be filled with new song and new laughter. But this pleasant legend did not… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ...… — 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
