J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.

Establish enigmas, not explanations.

There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms.

In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

An elusive, enigmatic aura will make people want to know more, drawing them into your circle. Create such a power by hinting at something contradictory within you.

I love creating mysteries, but I am terrible at solving them.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and the end of end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

Born of Black and White, Eaten with worms, I'm a Saint, a Sinner, a Siren of the Word, The Circle knows me, the rest just wanna trip on Grace Juice, Baby Showdown at midnight

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

Aren't you an enigma wrapped in a thick coating of contradictions.

Everything is simpler than one can imagine, and yet complicated and inter-twined beyond comprehension.

Nature is actually unnatural

We take comfort, however, that mystery is not a synonym for contradiction.

There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.

But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.

What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees Up, up it goes, And yet never grows? A mountain.

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.

I and this mystery, here we stand.

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).