#nat

It is not possible even at great length to “pot” The Lord of the Rings in a paragraph or two … It was begun in 1937, and every part has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered. And the placing, size, style, and contribution to the whole of the features, incidents, and chapters has been laboriously pondered. I do not say this in recommendation. It is, I feel, only too likely that I am deluded, lost in a web of vain imaginings of not much value to others – in spite of the fact that a few readers have found it good, on the whole. What I intend to say is this: I cannot substantially alter the thing. I have finished it, is “off my mind”: the labour has been colossal: and it must stand or fall, practically as it is. [1951] ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#imagination

I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it's a relief. If I'm walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile. ↗

— Viggo Mortensen

#been #desert #every #every second #felt

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. Jim Jarmusch ↗

— Austin Kleon

#creativity #imagination #inspiration #architecture

Before, the woods had always done so much for me. Once I could actually go out into the woods and communicate with God, or Nature or something. Now that something didn’t come through. It was just not there anymore. More than ever I began to wonder whether God actually existed. Maybe God changed as the individual changed, or perhaps grew as one grew. ↗

— Anne Moody

#civil-rights #coming-of-age-in-mississippi #faith #god #nature

I've known since I went to the national team when I was very young that I was a different bird. ↗

— Tiffeny Milbrett

#different #i #known #national #national team

Communism was meant to be an alternative religion. ↗

— David Miliband

#communism #meant #meant to be #religion

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he’d turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn’t Fancy; he was a farmer. ↗

— Sandra Neil Wallace

#animals #author-sandra-neil-wallace #coming-of-age #cows #farm-life

You are only as beautiful as your last action ... ↗

— Stephen Richards

#beautiful #beauty-in-nature #cosmic-ordering #mind-power #self-help

Save for thee and thy lessons, man in society would everywhere sink into a sad compound of the fiend and the wild beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a moral as a natural wilderness. ↗

— Hugh Miller

#certainly #compound #everywhere #fallen #fiend

Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy. ↗

— Kelly Miller

#bring #broad #commensurate #conviction #enemy