Tuesday, March 1, 2011

J.R.R. Tolkien- The Lord of the Rings

When Kayla and I were a little older, my dad would read us the Lord of the Rings stories, mostly The Hobbit. The following are excerpts from the series. 
"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."

"Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation."

"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

"It's like in the Great Stories, the ones that really matterd. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too young to understand why. But I think I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something-that there's some good in the world, and it's worth fighting for!"

Brief Biography on Tolkien:
He was orphaned as a child but was taken in by a priest.  He was educated at Oxford around 1915, but then was drafted to the army.  Prior to being drafted he joined a club called the TCBS (Tea Club Barrovian Society), and during the war all but Tolkien and one other died. After the war, he returned and became a professor at Oxford college. While a professor, he started a sort of club called the "Inklings" with several of his friends, one of them being C.S. Lewis, who was at least partly responsible for Tolkien's return to Christianity. After this, he continued to write and came out with the Hobbit and then with The Lord of the Rings.  He got so much attention from fans that soon he had to change his address and phone number and eventually moved into the house that he died in in 1973.
(If you want to read the complete biography, a great site is http://www.tolkiensociety.org/)

1 comment:

  1. This has got to be one of my top authors, and I'm loving the quote by Sam :)

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