My favourite:
>Thus, as 'Morgoth', when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction. Elves, and still more Men, he despised because of their 'weakness': that is their lack of physical force, or power over 'matter'; but he was also afraid of them. He was aware, at any rate originally when still capable of rational thought, that he could not 'annihilate' them: that is, destroy their being; but their physical 'life', and incarnate form became increasingly to his mind the only thing that was worth considering. Or he became so far advanced in Lying that he lied even to himself, and pretended that he could destroy them and rid Arda of them altogether. Hence his endeavour always to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them into his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object: Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own 'creatures', such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men. Melkor's final impotence and despair lay in this: that whereas the Valar (and in their degree Elves and Men) could still love 'Arda Marred', that is Arda with a Melkor-ingredient, and could still heal this or that hurt, or produce from its very marring, from its state as it was, things beautiful and lovely, Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others: even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have 'existed', independent of his own mind, and a world in potential.
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>Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.) Sauron had, in fact, been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly and could guess what he would be likely to think and do, even without the aid of palantiri or of spies; whereas Gandalf eluded and puzzled him. But like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.
Faramir and Samwise have the best quotes.
>And Morgoth came.
>>8286060
He did? What about his "final impotence"? He must have gotten that famous octo-reacharound from Ungoliant.
>>8287199
This is why I love the man. His very conception of reality was imbued with spirituality and woven into a mythical history. It's a beautiful thing. He knew how to tell the tales of mythical archetypes and frame the spiritual battle between sin and virtue within his stories.
This is one of my favorite clashes of good and evil in Lord of the Rings, Eowyn standing against the Witch King in defence of her father and the virtue of her people. The contrast between these two figures, and the way it unfolds during the battle of the Pelennor fields encompasses the mythic spirit that I love in Tolkiens writing.
>Be gone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!
>Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.
>Do what you will, but I will hinder it, if I may.
>Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!
>But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Be gone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.
I read this book years ago and then "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" reminded me of this quote.
" I know not," said Hurin. "Yet so it might be, if they willed. For the Elder King shall not be dethroned while Arda endures."
You say it," said Morgoth. "I am the Elder King: Melkor, first and mightiest of the Valar, who was before the world, and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will. But upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair. Wherever they go, evil shall arise. Whenever they speak, their words shall bring ill counsel. Whatsoever they do shall turn against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death."
Put this in my thesis lmao.
>But the Great Sea is terrible, Tuor son of Huor; and it hates the Noldor, for it works the Doom of the Valar. Worse things it holds than to sink into the abyss and so perish: loathing, and loneliness, and madness; terror of wind and tumult, and silence and shadows where all hope is lost and all living shapes pass away. And many shores evil and strange it washes, and many islands of danger and fear infest it. I will not darken your heart son of Middle-earth, with the tale of my labour seven years in the Great Sea from the North even into the South, but never to the West. For that is shut against us.
>But Fëanor laughed, and spoke not to the herald, but to the Noldor,saying: So! Then will this valiant people send forth the heir of their King alone into banishment with his sons only, and return to their bondage? But if any will come with me, I say to them: Is sorrow foreboded to you?
>But in Aman we have seen it. In Aman we have come through bliss to woe. The other now we will try: through sorrow to find joy; or freedom, at the least.
>Then turning to the herald he cried: Say this to Manwë Súlimo, High King of Arda: if Fëanor cannot overthrow Morgoth, at least he delays not to assail him, and sits not idle in grief. And it may be that Eru has set in me a fire greater than thou knowest. Such hurt at the least will I do to the Foe of the Valar that even the mighty in the Ring of Doom shall wonder to hear it. Yea, in the end they shall follow me.
>Farewell!
Basically any and all of Feanor's speeches. I doubt Tolkien intended him so, but the Nietzschean elements of his character are incredible and deeply haunting. The pursuit of his doom is rebellion itself.
>>8287754
what was your thesis about?
