J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth Quotes

“The incarnate angel of Tolkien’s mythology, Gandalf the Grey, said it well in a conversation with Frodo. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” laments the young Hobbit. “So do I,” Gandalf replies, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― Bradley J. Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth

“Evil labours with vast power and perpetual success...in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. - Tolkien, 68”
― Bradley J. Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth

“To the modernist, “myth,” like religion, merely signifies a comfortable and entrenched lie. For the postmodernist, myth simply represents one story, one narrative among many; it is purely subjective, certainly signifying nothing of transcendent or any other kind of importance.”
― Bradley J. Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth