8 quotes
It was like discovering a complete wine-filled cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavor never tasted before.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
'Power' is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except as applied to the gods.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) ... the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
The news today about "Atomic bombs" is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope "this will ensure peace". But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)