John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: Trending quotes

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: 156 quotes112 likes

“And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

“My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: 'Back Esperanto loyally.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"A Philologist on Esperanto" in The British Esperantist (May 1932).
Years later, in a 1956 letter (quoted more extensively below) he stated that Esperanto and other constructed languages were "dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends."

“The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

English and Welsh (1955)

“I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Letter to Edith, as quoted in J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography (1977) by Humphrey Carpenter, p. 66

“Well, the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter — leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machine are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Source: Letter to his son, Christopher (30 January 1945); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), Letter 96

“For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

English and Welsh (1955)

“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. … Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends…”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

No. 180: To a Mr. Thompson (incomplete draft of a letter, 1956).
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

“A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Letter to his son Christopher (30 January 1945) — in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), p. 110
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Mythopoeia (1931)

“"It's a gift!" he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book Leaf by Niggle

Leaf by Niggle (1945)

“Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

A rare interview with Tolkien (1966) — "Tolkien's shire" by John Ezard, The Guardian (28 December 1991) http://www.theguardian.com/books/1991/dec/28/jrrtolkien.classics

“To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the great scholars, past and present, 'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come. … Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

English and Welsh (1955)

“All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Mythopoeia (1931)

“As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

To Christopher Tolkien in South Africa
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“Power' is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except as applied to the gods.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

No. 131: letter to Milton Waldman (c. 1951)
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

No. 142: letter to his friend Robert Murray, S.J. (December 1953)
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“Most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is "beautiful," especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful…Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

English and Welsh (1955)

“Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Mythopoeia (1931)

“I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by 'arisch'. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. … But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. … I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

One of two draft letters (25 July, 1938) written for Stanley Unwin to select as a response to his German publishers inquiry about his ancestry. The other letter refused to answer altogether on his ancestry; since the quoted letter persists, it seems that the other letter was sent.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)