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"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history - true or feigned - with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
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Explore more quotes by J. R. R. Tolkien
"A King will have his way in his own hall, be it folly or wisdom."
Leadership
"Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together,' said Merry. 'We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded.''Not to me,' said Frodo. 'To me it feels more like falling asleep again."
Friendship
"Then the dwarves forgot their joy and their confident boasts of a moment before and cowered down in fright. Smaug was still to be reckoned with. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
Fear
"Don't the great tales never end?""No, they never end as tales," said Frodo. "But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later or sooner."
Storytelling
"And you, Ring-bearer,' she said, turning to Frodo. 'I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.' She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. 'In this phial,' she said, 'is caught the light of EA¤rendil's star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. Remember Galadriel and her Mirror!'Frodo took the phial, and for a moment as it shone between them, he saw her again standing like a queen, great and beautiful."
Hope
"Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world."
Art
"Above all shadows rides the Sunand Stars for ever dwell:I will not say the Day is done,nor bid the Stars farewell."
Nature
"And he smote the Balrog upon the mountainside."
Conflict
"A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one."
Love
"Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed."
Emotion
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"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."
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"And Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book."
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"Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world."
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"To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read."
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