This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the V”lsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable.
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J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can't a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace? But it is not your own Shire, said Gildor. Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
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J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ... Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends...
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