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...and for a great deal it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws.

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I think a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler. -Frodo Baggins

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Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the ...more

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Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!

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A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be sp...more

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I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the ...more

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But have a care! It is a bitter blade, and steel serves only those that can wield it. It will cut your hand as willingly as aught else.

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I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the i...more

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Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the fre...more

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Literature shrivels in a universal language, and an uprooted language rots before it dies. And it should be possible to lift the eyes above the cant o...more

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It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite in...more

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Under the Mountain dark and tallThe King has come unto his hall!His foe is dead,the Worm of Dread,And ever so his foes shall fall.The sword is sharp, ...more

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Though mortal Men have little life beside the span of the Elves, they would rather spend it in battle than fly or submit. The defiance of Húrin Thalio...more

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Give with a free hand, but give only of your own.

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Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!