J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?

The only paradise is paradise lost.

Travel is seeking the lost paradise. It is the supreme illusion of love.

The only possible paradises are those we have lost

Paradise is too perfect for humanity.

Even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever.

Eden, paradise - all the best gardens are imaginary.

Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.

Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

All play aspires to the condition of paradise...through play in all its forms...we hope to achieve a state that our larger Greco-Roman, Judeo- Christian culture has always known was lost. Where it exists, we do not know, although we always have envisioned it as a garden...always as removed, as an enclosed green place...Paradise is an ancient dream...It is a dream of ourselves as better than we are, back to what we were.

If we knew exactly what animal life was like before the fall into sin and knew what nature was like before the law of entropy invaded it, we would already be living in heaven.

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

We used to think earthly life was horrible and paradise awaited us when we died. Now we have made earthly life into a paradise and we fear death.

I always liked movies like 'American Graffiti' and 'Gregory's Girl.' 'Gregory's Girl' is particularly perfect because it really captures that summer holiday bubble of teenage utopia. Even though it's got a happy ending, there's a feeling that these characters may never see each other again.

I'm always sad to leave paradise, but I leave behind the hopes of coming again soon.

I feel like I've spent a lot of time imagining home and thinking about a dream-like place, as opposed to a real place, because that's not what I was able to do, meaning go home or be home.

Like Adam, we have all lost Paradise; and yet we carry Paradise around inside of us in the form of a longing for, almost a memory of, a blessedness that is no more, or the dream of a blessedness that may someday be again.

If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.

Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

Remember, once more how our world should be. And please, don't forget, please, please don't forget.