“Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.”
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book A Secret Vice
"A Secret Vice" (lecture, 1931) published in The Monsters And The Critics And Other Essays (1983), edited by Christopher Tolkien

A Secret Vice is the title of a talk written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931, given to a literary society entitled 'A Hobby for the Home', in which he first publicly revealed his interest in invented languages. Some twenty years later, Tolkien revised the manuscript for a second presentation.It deals with constructed languages in general and the relation of a mythology to its language. Tolkien contrasts international auxiliary languages with artistic languages constructed for aesthetic pleasure.
“Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.”
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book A Secret Vice
"A Secret Vice" (lecture, 1931) published in The Monsters And The Critics And Other Essays (1983), edited by Christopher Tolkien