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
heart light understanding
A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo's heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped.
hens beaks pens
A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.
morning son thinking
To think I should have lived to be goodmorninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!
adventure sunshine may
Adventures are not all pony-rides in May-sunshine.
wings armor tails
My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!
eye light glasses
He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.
moving eye small-hands
Such is of the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
spring sorrow earth
For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.
faith evil soil
evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.
heart mind impossible
I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.
being-strong travel roots
All that is gold does not glitter.
philosophy fall men
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.
dirty mean smell
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
faith inspiration perception-of-beauty
All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady.