Tolkien is most famous for writing the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, each of which is fantastic in it’s own right.
However, there is a fair amount of wisdom in the pages of his writing, and some of it can be used to help us through different challenges and adversities in life.
While none of us are going to be taking a ring past the armies of evil and throwing it into a volcano, we all have our own brand of troubles, struggles, hardships, and obstacles to overcome. For many, good philosophy is practical philosophy, and the best practical philosophy is those concepts that transcend the situations in which they’re written and apply broadly across multiple areas of life.
Tolkien Quotes
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
The wise speak only of what they know
His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.
“Darkness must pass, a new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.
It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.
Many are the strange chances of the world…and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.
A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “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.”
I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.
Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
Little by little, one travels far.
I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.
Courage is found in unlikely places.
Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
“The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow, if I can.
You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends
I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?
Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power.
