The Darkness has begun. There will be no dawn.
I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.
You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil.
A few melancholy birds were pipping and wailing, until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows; then an empty silence fell.
Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter!
But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?
It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.
We are never late. We arrive precisely when we mean to.
Green are the leaves I leave in Mirkwood.
I don’t want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can’t escape is even worse.
He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.
Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate; they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.
And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.
The romantic chivalric tradition takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars.
The way is shut. Then they halted and looked at him and saw that he lived still; but he did not look at them. The way is shut, his voice said again. It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. The way is shut.
The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.