The Road Goes Ever On

“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,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”

J. R. R. Tolkien,

The Lord of the Rings, “The Fellowship of the Ring”

Unique Purpose

“Believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that your life and temperament have some object on earth. Believe that you have something to give the world which cannot otherwise be given.”

G. K. Chesterton, (“Philosophy of Browning,” Robert Browning)

Tree of Theology

“People will tell you that theology became too elaborate because it was dead. Believe me, if it had been dead it would never have become elaborate; it is only the live tree that grows too many branches.”

G. K. Chesterton, “The Hat and the Halo” The Thing

Swimming Upstream

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

G. K. Chesterton, “The Five Deaths of the Faith” The Everlasting Man

chance of turning back

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end”

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Head in the Sand

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Ring

victory?

“hope is not victory”

J. R. R. Tolkien