Great Throughts Treasury

"We have already transgressed the limit of safety, and the present disorders of our time are but precursors of other and imminent dangers. The rudder of our ship has ceased to move obedient to the helm. We are drifting on the seething tide of business, each one absorbed in holding his own in the giddy race of competition, each one engrossed in immediate cares and seldom disturbed by thoughts of larger concerns and ampler interests. Even our domestic life has lost much of its former warmth and geniality." - Felix Adler

"I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family." - Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

"Man by working and fabricating and building a world inhabited only by himself would still be a fabricator, though not homo faber: he would have lost his specifically human quality and, rather, be a god - not, to be sure, the Creator, but a divine demiurge as Plato described him in one of his myths." - Hannah Arendt

"One must have been controlled in the same situation one wishes to properly control others." - Italian Proverbs

"One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon." - Italian Proverbs

"One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds." - Italian Proverbs

"Plenty of words when the cause is lost." - Italian Proverbs

"t is better to ride a donkey that carries you than a horse that throws you." - Italian Proverbs

"There is never enough where nought is left." - Italian Proverbs

"You surround your vineyard with thorns - place doors and locks on your mouth. You will never have a friend if you must have one without faults." - Italian Proverbs

"A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?" - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"All now took leave of the Lord of the City and went to rest while they still could. Outside there was a starless blackness as Gandalf, with Pippin beside him bearing a small torch, made his way to their lodging. They did not speak until they were behind closed doors. Then at last Pippin took Gandalf's hand. 'Tell me,' he said, 'is there any hope? For Frodo, I mean; or at least mostly for Frodo.' Gandalf put his hand on Pippin's head. 'There never was much hope,' he answered. 'Just a fool's hope, as I have been told. And when I heard of Cirith Ungol--' He broke off and strode to the window, as if his eyes could pierce the night in the East. 'Cirith Ungol!' he muttered. 'Why that way, I wonder?' He turned. 'Just now, Pippin, my heart almost failed me, hearing that name. And yet in truth I believe that the news that Faramir brings has some hope in it. For it seems clear that the Enemy has opened his war at last and made the first move when Frodo was still free. So now for many days he will have his eye turned this way and that, away from his own land. And yet, Pippin, I feel from afar his haste and fear. He has begun sooner than he would. Something has happened to stir him." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"At least for a while the road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Bilbo?s Last Song - Day is ended, dim my eyes, but journey long before me lies. Farewell, friends! I hear the call. The ship's beside the stony wall. Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond the sunset leads my way. Foam is salt, the wind is free; I hear the rising of the Sea. Farewell, friends! The sails are set, the wind is east, the moorings fret. Shadows long before me lie, beneath the ever-bending sky, but islands lie behind the Sun that I shall raise ere all is done; lands there are to west of West, where night is quiet and sleep is rest. Guided by the Lonely Star, beyond the utmost harbor-bar, I?ll find the heavens fair and free, and beaches of the Starlit Sea. Ship, my ship! I seek the West, and fields and mountains ever blest. Farewell to Middle-earth at last. I see the Star above my mast!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of L¢rien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. 'There at last when the Mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and Elanor and Niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Don't ever laugh at live Dragons, Bilbo you fool!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Embrace The Power of The Ring! Or embrace your own destruction!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Eomer said, 'How is a man to judge what to do in such times?'" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"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." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Faithful heart may have forward tongue." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and C¡rdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand... But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: 'This I will have as weregild for my father's death, and my brother's. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?' And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"For the less even as for the greater there is some deed that he may accomplish but once only; and in that deed his heart shall rest." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Good stories deserve a little embellishment." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Great heart will not be denied." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling! Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling. Down along under the Hill, shining in the sunlight, waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight, there my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter, slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water. Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing? Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o, Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o! Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away! Tom's in a hurry now. Evening will follow day. Tom's going home again water lilies-bringing. Hey! Come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I am commanded to go to the land of Mordor, and therefore I shall go,' said Frodo. 'If there is only one way, then I must take it. What comes after must come." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien