The Red Book: August 2016

Overtaking Saruman

Painting by John Howe

August 28

The party bound for Rivendell meets Saruman on the road.

"'What is that to you?' [Saruman] answered. 'Will you still order my goings, and are you not content with my ruin?'"

And very thinly veiled threat:

"'Mine, mine, yes and dearly bought!' cried Saruman, clutching at the pouch. 'This is only a repayment in token; for you took more, I'll be bound. Still, a beggar must be grateful, if a thief returns him even a morsel of his own. Well, it will serve you right when you come home, if you find things less good in the Southfarthing than you would like. Long may your land be short of leaf!'"

(Lest there should be any confusion or matter of rights and whatnot, all quotes in this post are from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, unless otherwise mentioned. There may be slight errors, misspellings, or alternate punctuation in the quotes, and if you notice such, please inform me so that I can speedily remedy them. But I think the fact that I made this blog proves that I would never intentionally change something of Tolkien's in the transcribing of it.)

QUOTES: Smaug

“I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong strong.”

~Smaug

In which I make a promise

Hello readers, as a result of the Quote Debacle of 2016 I have just made a decision. I will no longer rely upon even the most reliable of sources. Because even if it is an actual quote, I've found that a lot of times liberties have been taken with rewording and whatnot. Now this could just be the result of different editions of the book, but no matter.

From now on, if a quote is to be found in either The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, or the Silmarillion, I promise I will look the blasted thing up in the book, and not only check to make sure it's real, but I will type it up myself, from the book, to ensure its accuracy.

This does mean there may be a decrease in the frequency of quotes, since this will make it a slightly more time consuming task to post them.

This could be considered overreacting, but I don't care. Plus if everyone did this, there would never be a problem.

For the record, I do quote the movie sometimes, and that I won't be checking. Do you think I should put a note when I am quoting the movie so no one thinks it's from the book?

Also if something is spelled weird in future quotes, it's because I forgot to translate it into american, and it is still spelled the british way. And then again, there are actually just words that I still spell that way because at the time I was learning to read and spell, Chronicles of Narnia was prevalent in my life. Usually auto-correct fixes them before posts are published, but you never know.

QUOTES: Smaug

My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”
~Smaug

QUOTES: Bilbo

"Never laugh at live dragons"
~Bilbo

QUOTES: Gandalf

"Not all tears are an evil"
~Gandalf

I have been lied to

When quoting the Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, or any other of Tolkien's writings that I own, I never trust the internet, I always look it up in the book, and then type it up myself.

But when it comes to things that aren't in books I own, or that were said by Tolkien and not written, or were in letters that no one can get their hands on, I have to rely on the internet.

Recently I posted the quote "a single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities" having made sure that it was attributed to him by many different Tolkien websites and blogs, as well as general quotes sites.

It did not occur to me that something that widely believed could still be false. http://www.thetolkienist.com/2013/04/24/not-a-tolkien-quote-a-single-dream-is-more-powerful-than-a-thousand-realities-tthnsdwohatdw-part-3/

I am exceedingly miffed to say the least. The worst of it is that I am naturally mistrustful of everything on the internet, and I try to be so careful, and yet I have still been taken in.

While the internet can be very useful and helpful, it also spreads falsehoods faster than the blink of an eye (although I don't think Sauron's eye blinks).

Other quotes misattributed to Tolkien include but are not limited to:

'little by little one travels far'

'It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit'

'Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation'

'fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory'

A Brief Summary August 14-22

August 14
Guests take leave of Eomer

August 15
Saruman is released by Treebeard

August 18
They arrive at Helm's Deep

August 22
The party arrives at Isengard, and at sunset they part from Aragorn, King of the West.

QUOTES: Faramir

"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
~Faramir

QUOTES: JRR Tolkien

"Some who have read [The Lord of the Rings], or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since i have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."
~JRR Tolkien

August 10 3019 TA

Funeral of King Theoden

"...[H]e was laid in a house of stone with his arms and many other fair things that he had possessed, and over him was raised a great mound, covered with green turves of grass and of white evermind."

"But Merry stood at the foot of the green mound, and he wept, and when the song was ended he arose and cried: 'Theoden King, Theoden King! Farewell! As a father you were to me, for a little while. Farewell!'"