In honor of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, an English writer, poet, and professor of language, best known as the author of the classic works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who was born on this day in 1892.
- “If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured.”
- “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.”
- “The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.”
- “End? No, it doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one which we must all take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass… And then you see it… White shores, and beyond, a far green country, under a swift sunrise.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien
Resources:
Literary Birthday – January 3- J.R.R. Tolkien
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes> Goodreads
Top 12 J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes
J.R.R. Tolkien
A DEVOTED LIFE 