Morgoth's Ring Quotes

“We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“But it may be the hard part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“What then was this hope, if you know?’ Finrod asked.
‘They say,’ answered Andreth: ‘they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“What we have in the Silmarillion etc. are traditions (especially personalized, and centred upon actors, such as Fëanor) handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor); but already far back — from the first association of the Dúnedain and Elf-friends with the Eldar in Beleriand — blended and confused with their own Mannish myths and cosmic ideas.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“But you are not for Arda. Whither you go may you find light.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“That is one thing that Men call “hope”,’ said Finrod. ‘Amdir we call it, “looking up”. But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust”. It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“But always among them (as special servants and spies of Melkor, and as leaders) there must have been numerous corrupted minor spirits who assumed similar bodily shapes. (These would exhibit terrifying and demonic characters.)”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“I think it must be assumed that ‘talking’ is not necessarily the sign of the possession of a ‘rational soul’ or fëa.7 The Orcs were beasts of humanized shape (to mock Men and Elves) deliberately perverted / converted into a more close resemblance to Men. Their ‘talking’ was really reeling off ‘records’ set in them by Melkor.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Since the minds of Men (and even of the Elves) were inclined to confuse the ‘Void’, as a conception of the state of Not-being, outside Creation or Ëa, with the conception of vast spaces within Ëa, especially those conceived to lie all about the enisled ‘Kingdom of Arda’ (which we should probably call the Solar System).”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“For example, all gold (in Middle-earth) seems to have had a specially ‘evil’ trend — but not silver.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Morgoth’s power was disseminated throughout Gold, if nowhere absolute (for he did not create Gold) it was nowhere absent. (It was this Morgoth-element in matter, indeed, which was a prerequisite for such ‘magic’ and other evils as Sauron practised with it and upon it.)”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“He, like Melkor, practically never is seen or heard of outside or far away from his own halls and permanent residence. Why is this? For no very profound reason. The Government is always in Whitehall. King Arthur is usually in Camelot or Caerleon, and news and adventures come there and arise there.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Sauron was also wiser than Melkor-Morgoth. Sauron was not a beginner of discord; and he probably knew more of the ‘Music’ than did Melkor, whose mind had always been filled with his own plans and devices, and gave little attention to other things.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“As a shadow Melkor did not then conceive himself. For in his beginning he loved and desired light, and the form that he took was exceedingly bright; and he said in his heart: ‘On such brightness as I am the Children shall hardly endure to look; therefore to know of aught else or beyond or even to strain their small minds to conceive of it would not be for their good.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Others there were, countless to our thought though known each and numbered in the mind of Ilúvatar, whose labour lay elsewhere and in other regions and histories of the Great Tale, amid stars remote and worlds beyond the reach of the furthest thought. But of these others we know nothing and cannot know, though the Valar of Arda, maybe, remember them all.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“the fëa retains a memory, an imprint, of its hröa, its ‘former house’, so powerful and precise that the reconstruction of an identical body can proceed from it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Already it is (if inevitably) too like a parody of Christianity. Any legend of the Fall would make it completely so?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“the coming of Eru’, if it took place, would be specially and primarily concerned with Men: that is to an imaginative guess or vision that Eru would come incarnated in human form.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“incredible. Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered.23”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“All the Elves would then ‘die’ at the End of Arda. What this would mean they did not know. They said therefore that Men had a shadow behind them, but the Elves had a shadow before them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Physically Arda was what we should call the Solar System.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“and the part they were designed to play in what he would have called the Oienkarmë Eruo (The One’s perpetual production), which might be rendered by ‘God’s management of the Drama’.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Nay, adaneth, if any marriage can be between our kindred and thine, then it shall be for some high purpose of Doom. Brief it will be and hard at the end. Yea, the least cruel fate that could befall would be that death should soon end it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“To such questions only those of the “Old Hope” (as they call themselves) have any guess of an answer.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“Mirröanwi10 as we call the Children of Eru.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“But indeed the Wise are uncertain and speak with contrary voices; for whatever happened long ago, we have fled from it; we have tried to forget, and so long have we tried that now we cannot remember any time when we were not as we are — save only legends of days when death came less swiftly and our span was still far longer, but already there was death.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring