"Those were happier days, when there was..." - Quote by J R R Tolkien

“You ought not to be rude to an eagle, when you are only the size of a hobbit, and are up in hid eyrie at night!”

“Time doesn't seem to pass here: it just is.”

“Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).”

“Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.”

“Sometimes in our relationship to another human being the proper balance of friendship is restored when we put a few grains of impropriety onto our own side of the scale.”

“A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.”

“After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.”

“He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. - Ben Franklin”

“My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education. My life and education both do learn me How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty, I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband, And so much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord.”