Tolkien Inspirational Quotes

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim. (I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept none for myself.) (Gilraen's linnod)

But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.

There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.

The treacherous are ever distrustful.

I will take the Ring", he said, "though I do not know the way.

Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.

If most of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.

We meet again, at the turn of the tide. A great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.

I'll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind," said Sam. "And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.

The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing.

The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.

Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.

Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

Not all that have fallen are vanquished.

Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken,swords shall be splintered! A sword day...a red day...ere the sun rises! Ride now!...Ride now!...Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! "Death!" Death! "Death!" DEATH! "Death!" Forth, Eorlingas!!

Things are drawing towards the end now, unless I am mistaken. There is an unpleasant time just in front of you; but keep your heart up!

In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.

He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.

But I spoke hastily. We must not be hasty. I have become too hot. I must cool myself and think; for it is easier to shout stop! than to do it.

I don't know how to say it, but after last night I feel different. I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. It isn't right to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want - I don't rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. just so a Party-spokesman might have labeled departure from the misery of the Fuhrer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery .... Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the "quisling" to the resistance of the patriot.

Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies it can hardly be applied, unless super is taken merely as a superlative prefix. For it is man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural; whereas they are natural, far more natural than he. Such is their doom.

Despair is for people who know, beyond any doubt, what the future is going to bring. Nobody is in that position. So despair is not only a kind of sin, theologically, but also a simple mistake, because nobody actually knows. In that sense there is always hope.

I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

The day will bring hope for me," said Aragorn. "Is it not said that no foe has ever taken the Hornburg, if men defended it?" "So the minstrels say," said Éomer. "Then let us defend it, and hope!

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.

There are other men, and other lives, and time still to be.

I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon; and if any of these Black Riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said. They laughed.

Darkness must pass; a new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

Strength is not created by adversity; it is merely awakened by it.

There may come a time at last that I Shall take the hidden paths that run East of the moon west of the sun.

And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

Warwick Castle, Oxford University, the Cotswold, and the countryside of England are my favorite places to visit when I’m in England. Whenever I visit, I feel as if I’ve come home. These places inspired my settings for my fantasy series, Bitter Frost Series, Wordwick Games, and The Alchemists Academy. I didn’t know the great author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was also inspired by Warwick, Oxford, and Cotswold. Imaginative minds must dream alike.

I can manage," said Frodo. "I must.

The excitement of creating is followed by desperate self-doubt. Courage and inspiration compete with discouragement and despair.

If all the seven stones were laid out before me now, I should shut my eyes and put my hands in my pockets.

If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.

Great heart will not be denied.

Go backwards? No good at all. Go sideways? Impossible! Go forwards? Only thing to do, on we go!

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-Dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

I wish none of this had happened.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

I can die in any way the fates choose, that's not up to me. But what is within my power is to decide how I live. Courageously, or timidly.

Онзи, що бяга от участта си, може някой ден да открие, че само е избрал по-пряка пътека.

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth.

Roads go ever ever on Under cloud and under star Yet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar. Eyes that fire and sword have seen And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green And trees and hills they long have known.

I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side." - Treebeard

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

He did not falter, as long as there was a path that led toward his goal.

Whether they've made the land, or the land's made them, it's hard to say, if you take my meaning.

Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else knew about it was beside the purpose. He took his staff in one hand and the phial in his other. When he saw that the clear light was already welling through his fingers, he thrust it into his bosom and held it against his heart. Then turning from the city of Morgul, now no more than a grey glimmer across a dark gulf, he prepared to take the upward road.

He was going to learn about sheep, and the high pasturages, and look at a wider sky, and walk ever further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill. Beyond that I cannot guess what became of him. Even little Niggle in his old home could glimpse the Mountains far away, and they got into the borders of his picture; but what they are really like, and what lies beyond them, only those can say who have climbed them.

The king was silent. "Ents!" he said at length. "Out of the shadows of legend I begin a little to understand the marvel of the trees, I think. I have lived to see strange days. Long we have tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of the strange places, and walk visible under the Sun." "You should be glad," Théoden King," said Gandalf. "For not only the little life of Men is now endangered, but the life also of those thing which you have deemed the matter of legend. You are not without allies, even if you know them not." "Yet also I should be sad," said Théoden. "For however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?

One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

false hopes are more dangerous than fears.

It was an irresistible development of modern illustration (so largely photographic) that borders should be abandoned and the "picture" end only with the paper. This method may be suitable for for photographs; but it is altogether inappropriate for the pictures that illustrate or are inspired by fairy-stories. An enchanted forest requires a margin, even an elaborate border. To print it coterminous with the page, like a "shot" of the Rockies in Picture Post, as if it were indeed a "snap" of fairyland or a "sketch by our artist on the spot", is a folly and an abuse.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no reason to complain, since I have similar opinions of their work, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam. Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam? Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

Nigdy nie drwij z żywego smoka, Bilbo głupcze

Go back? He thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible. Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!

All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you" -Gandalf

The main thing we can learn from The Lord of the Rings is that we who are in a position to save the world (by which I mean all of us) do so primarily to save our friends.

There is a long road yet," said Gandalf. "But it is the last road," said Bilbo.

You sit in these halls with a crown upon your head, and yet you are less of a man than you have ever been.

To walk in Time, perhaps, as men walk on long roads... to see the lie of old and even forgotten lands, to behold ancient men walking, and to hear their languages as they spoke them, in the days before the days, when tongues of forgotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of the Atlantic." -- J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lost Road

Tu inspiraste Rowling, e foi nas terras de Morpheus que se moldou Hogwarts. Tu inspiraste Tolkien, e foi nas terras de Phantasos que se anexaram as extensões de Terra-Média. Tu inspiraste Lovecraft e em minhas terras se fixou Miskatonic. Então eu te pergunto com sinceridade, anjo: até onde vai tua vontade de ser coadjuvante em um mundo de formas e pensamentos?

Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea; Over snow by winter sown, And through merry flowers of June, Over grass and under stone, And under mountains in the moon. Roads go ever ever on Under cloud and under star Yet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar. Eyes that fire and sword have seen And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green And trees and hills they long have known.

Death is their fate, the gift of Ilъvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.

Evil for Tolkien was a personal battle within each and every individual. A battle might be won or lost, but the war was unending.

They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain! -Smaug

Tolkien believed doggedly in the old-fashioned notion that the purpose of philology was to read literature and that literature couldn’t be properly studied without philology.

Mightier than Este is Nienna, sister of the Feanturi; she dwells alone. She is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. So great was her sorrow, as the Music unfolded, that her song turned to lamentation long before its end, and the sound of mourning was woven into the themes of the World before it began. But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope. ...all those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom.

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him

My emotional range is limited. I can’t do grief, but rage is my friend. For instance, I hate death by sickness. It is nothing like Homer, the Old Testament, and Tolkien led me to expect. It is not noble and awe-inspiring. No one delivers a final soliloquy. It is as abrupt and banal as the flicking of a switch. The squiggly line on the monitor straightens out, the defibrillator doesn’t even go whomp, the epinephrine is useless, the nurse doing CPR looks up and even before the doctor pronounces the words, you know. This is not what death should be. Death, the reason for religion, the subject of great literature, the certainty we spend our lives warding off, the giant mystery that looms over everything we do, death should be spectacular, not pity-inducing, a bang and not a whimper. A huge ball of fire, a shower of sparks, a final charge into the ranks of your enemies, a terrific explosion, a backward dive into the fiery pit. Not. . . this.

found myself gazing in wonderment at my surroundings. Even now, I couldn’t help but be awed by the scope and detail of Tolkien’s imagination. After almost a century, artists and storytellers and programmers were still drawing inspiration from his creation.

... the reader is probably wondering that if Tolkien did indeed fashion two of his heroic characters from Catholic prophecies, what about the evil protagonists? Were any of them inspired by these little-known revelations concerning future times? The answer is yes, but to discover the links between the myth and the prophecies, we must venture not only into the realm of unnerving revelations, but also into the murky world of secret sects, dark plots, occult signs, bloody revolutions and conspiracy theories ~ we must probe deep into the burning Eye of Sauron.

The moral that Plato wished to draw out is that no man can resist the temptation of being able to steal and kill at will. All men are corruptible. Morality is a social construct imposed from the outside. A man may appear to be moral in public to maintain his reputation for integrity and honesty, but once he possesses the power of invisibility, the use of such power would be irresistible. (Some believe that this morality tale was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which a ring that grants the wearer invisibility is also a source of evil.)

My emotional range is limited. I can’t do grief, but rage is my friend. For instance, I hate death by sickness. It is nothing like Homer, the Old Testament, and Tolkien led me to expect. It is not noble and awe-inspiring. No one delivers a final soliloquy. It is as abrupt and banal as the flicking of a switch.

Wagner’s Ring Cycle has kept one version of one of the great Norse stories alive in the minds of music lovers. Readers of modern fantasy will find many echoes of the Norse tales as well. Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams and others have explicitly taken some of the Norse gods and put them into a modern setting with strange, sad and humorous results. Echoes of Norse tales and creatures abound in the speculative fiction of Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Tad Williams and others. Something in these old and puzzling stories still has the power to move and unsettle us, and to inspire new acts of creation.

Tolkien preferred the still, small voice of Elijah to the resounding horns of Sinai. Accordingly, his commitment to myth as his medium was dogged. He repeatedly denied that The Lord of the Rings was allegory. The reason is this: allegory intends that this particular thing in the story is meant to be that particular thing known outside the story. In a way, it is coercive, forcing the reader to see things in a certain way. For example, Lewis’s lion in the Narnia books, Aslan, is meant to be understood by the reader as a representation of Christ. Tolkien, in fact, was annoyed with Lewis for engaging in allegory, which he found heavy-handed. (Lewis, for his part, denied that his Narnia books were only allegory.) He believed myth to be a more artistically subtle device. Tolkien did not, for instance, intend his War of the Ring to be a battle of good versus evil. He didn’t see matters in such black-and-white terms and did not believe in absolute evil. During the Great War, he didn’t view the Germans as all bad and the English as all good. In the Lord of the Rings, even Sauron, like Lucifer, did not start as evil. Evil for Tolkien was a personal battle within each and every individual. A battle might be won or lost, but the war was unending.

Si diéramos a la comida, la alegría y las canciones más valor que al oro, este sería sin duda un mundo más feliz

Things are drawing to the end now, unless I am mistaken. There is an unpleasant time just in front of you; but keep your heart up! You _may_ come through all right." [said Gandalf]

Tolkien has helped my imagination. He was a devout Catholic — and I am not. However, because he brought his faith to bear into narrative, fiction, and literature, his Christianity — which was pretty ‘mere Christianity’ (understanding of human sin, need for grace, need for redemption) — fleshed out in fiction, has been an inspiration to me. What I mean by inspiration is this: he gives me a way of grasping glory that would otherwise be hard for me to appreciate. Glory, weightiness, beauty, excellence, brilliance, virtue — he shows them to you in some of his characters. When people ask me how often I have read The Lord of the Rings, the answer is, I actually never stop. I’m always in it.

Overused Settings All too often, games borrow settings from one another or from common settings found in the movies, books, or television. A huge number of games are set in science fiction and fantasy worlds, especially the quasi-medieval, sword-and-sorcery fantasy inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, popular with the young people who used to be the primary—indeed, almost the only—market for computer games. But a more diverse audience plays games nowadays, and they want new worlds to play in. You should look beyond these hoary old staples of gaming.

I am no man

We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.

Non tutto quel ch'è oro brilla, né gli erranti son perduti. Il vecchio ch'è forte non s'aggrinza e le radici profonde non gelano.