J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE, FRSL, known by his pen name J. R. R. Tolkien, was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 January 1892
unseen today enough
Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.
optimism may goes-on
Well, you can go on looking forward," said Gandalf. "There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you.
air smell water
The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it.
mean simple noble
Without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless
said cracked knows
Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper. "How far is there to go?" I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going.
treacherous
The treacherous are ever distrustful.
real drawing wish
Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.
letters receiving difficult
For some time I lived in fear of receiving a letter signed 'S. Gollum'. That would have been more difficult to deal with.
odds people impossible
I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.
dream venice lovely
Venice seemed incredibly lovely, elvishly lovely--to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.
beautiful doors sky
Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent.
our-world different earth
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.
heart great-hearts denied
Great heart will not be denied.
cutting thinking one-day
There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.