Memorable Lines and Short Passages

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, I love that too. Particularly knowing what his fate turned out to be.

Thanks for dusting off this thread, Bolg!

[Alys]

What a lovely thread

I have a couple that I can think of off the top of my head;

And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of a minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

There are many others, but I am not so good at remembering what or where they are. And some of them have already been posted here too of course

[spd]

Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey, or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away, to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where they flesh shall be devoured and thy shriveled mind left naked to the Lidless Eye.

Chilled me to the bone the first time I read it June of 1990, still chills me to this day.

And of course Éowyn's steadfast courage, born of love, in the face of such despair still moves me to tears:

Begone foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! You stand between me and my lord and kin. Be you living or dark undead, I will smite you if you touch him.*

*quoted from memory; forgive any inaccuracies.

[narya]

Thanks for helping with the quote, Brian and Imp!
Brian, yours is much better than mine, the rhythm flows more poetically!

"We see clearly only with the heart."

Imp, yes, that's the best version, I think - is it what the English translation uses?
(Someone here must have read The Little Prince! )

I have. It was quite popular in the 70s.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Here are a few other translations, even Esperanto:
http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/people/hemmecke/lprince/

---

The quote that plucks my heart strings the most?

"Don't go where I can't follow."

The line meant little to me until my aunt died. Then I found myself reading the surrounding passage every night. It gave me solace, somehow.

[Sassafras]

The sheer weight of the language and the image it evokes is staggering! One can almost feel how driven is Fingolfin's desperate, suicidal challenge. He knows his death is imminent, yet sorrowfull as it is, that death is not utterly futile and it is full of epic glory.


Therefore Morgoth came, climbing slowly from his subterranean throne, and the rumour of his feet was like thunder underground. And he
issued forth clad in black armour; and he stood before the king like a tower, iron-crowned and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a storm cloud. But Fingolfin gleamed beneath it like a star; for his mail was overlaid with silver, and his blue shield was
set with crystals; and he drew his sword Ringil, and it glittered like ice, cold and gray and deadly.

The Lost Road and Other Writings book II
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<The changes made in the Sil are very subtle but I find the version above to be even more powerful>
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I really should finish my post on Fingolfin. Try to, anyway.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, you should.

[Impenitent]

"Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside."

It seems so prosaic, yet I really like that passage - particularly the sentences I have emboldened. before the seas were bent...he knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside...

And it was a different Dark Lord, as we know and the hobbits don't, for he speaks of Morgoth. Makes me shiver. I glimpse the long, long road from the dark of Arda through the eons and the Ages when I hear him say that.

Mind you, I am also stopped in my tracks by "Tell me, who are you alone, yourself and nameless?"

Who, indeed? Who am I, alone, without any context? Am I my roots and my family and my culture and my age? Who am I? What is my psyche? Or is Freud the answer - the Id, Ego and superEgo?

Tom's quote there gives me a good dose of existential angst.

[axordil]

Mind you, I am also stopped in my tracks by "Tell me, who are you alone, yourself and nameless?"

Possibly the most fundamental question posed by the books. The relationship between the object (or person) and the name is arguabley the most relevant philosophical issue, given how it continues to shape our world today. What are we without our names, without the identity others give us? Are we anything at all without a context of others?

[Frelga]

What a magnificent passage. My favorite bit is this:

He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless

Can you imagine feeling safe and content in the starlight?

[Impenitent]

Once. Just once.

We were touring in the Sinai desert, and for that week, we camped, literally, under the stars. No tents, no buildings of any kind anywhere in sight, even the road was unsealed, awash with sand and indistinguishable. No lights, no noise. Just the stars in the dark of the moon with no clouds at all. We rolled into our sleeping bags and slept on the sand.

One night, I woke some time in the small hours but it felt timeless. It was very cold, and I remember shivering even in the down-filled bag but it was extraordinarily peaceful, the bones of the desert lit by the light of the stars, silvery with black shadows, the stars themselves so close that I was sure I needed only to stand up to touch them.

It was not possible to feel afraid, somehow, for time had stood still.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

There are many beautiful moments in Tolkien's works, several of which have been quoted in this thread. Like Whistler, some of my favorites are the humorous little bits that Tolkien has injected into his works. I'd like share one from each volume of LOTR.


The hobbits' first night in "The House of Tom Bombadil" are fraught with nightmares. Each of them awakes during the night, only to have the soothing words of Goldberry come to their minds. The exception is Sam:

As far as he could remember, Sam slept through the night in deep content, if logs are contented.

Tolkien's subtle way of saying that Sam "slept like a log".


The next passage comes from "The Road to Isengard" in TTT:

'Farewell, my hobbits! May we meet again in my house. There you shall sit beside me and tell me all that your hearts desire: the deeds of your grandsires, as far as you can reckon them; and we shall speak also of Tobold the Old and his herb-lore. Farewell!'

The hobbits bowed low. 'So that is the King of Rohan!' said Pippin in an undertone. 'A fine old fellow. Very polite.'

This scene makes me think of Merry and Pippin as Mac and Tosh, those two overly polite gophers in the Looney Tunes cartoons.


Finally a scene from "The Scouring of the Shire" where Gaffer Gamgee demonstrates that he's not familiar with the concept of armor:

'It takes a lot o' believing,' said the gaffer, 'though I can see he's been mixing in strange company. What's come of his weskit? I don't hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.'

A weskit, or waistcoat, is what we call a vest here in the U.S. Both Bilbo Baggins and Tolkien himself were fond of wearing brightly colored waistcoats.