Home > Topic > The Mines
1 " I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955 "
― J.R.R. Tolkien
2 " He who has never left his hearth and has confined his researches to the narrow field of the history of his own country cannot be compared to the courageous traveller who has worn out his life in journeys of exploration to distant parts and each day has faced danger in order to persevere in excavating the mines of learning and in snatching precious fragments of the past from oblivion. "
― , From The Meadows of Gold
3 " Doing nothing is the hardest torture that a person can put himself through. For he is always brought face to face with his own self, which demands that he gives account for the sun which he uselessly squanders, for the springs of energy in his organism, the gold of wisdom in the mines of his brains. The masses work, slog, forget. They drink the alcohol of their sweat. Work is a flight from responsibility and God. Since the mystic beliefs have been banned from Europe, pillars of glory have been erected to rationality in order to put something in place of the cross: the French Revolution named its goddess reason, the Russians named their Moloch work. But the machine called Europe is running idle: it fills stomachs with fake bread, builds artificial houses with iron paper, the products are bad, the pay meager, and at the end of the six holy work days is the unholy Sunday which one sleeps through out of fear of the great boredom which is infecting Europe. Sunday, the day of idleness, is nowadays a punishment for Christianity, the cities collapse into soulless ruins, nature is just a backdrop for dusty sports. Doing nothing out of principle, my dear, is nowadays the most violent form of revolt. "
4 " Diamonds do not burst out from the mines into your hands. The universe, instead, will direct the men to discover the mines and find the diamonds for you. "
― Stephen Richards , Be First: Achieve Every Dream
5 " I wrought me a lyric of fire and fear,And called on the world to heed —Till strong men blenched at my haggard faceAnd shuddered, but would not read.So I stole me the gold of the mines of JoyAnd fashioned a conscious lie —And they gave me the wreath of the kings of SongAnd prayed that I might not die!(For the lie that I wrought was as old as the worldAnd dear as the vision of Heaven —Of the crimson lure of a maiden's lipsAnd the myth of a sin forgiven!)But my heart was sick, and my soul grew less, With the light of my failing days,Because I had lied to my Knowledge-GodFor the pottage of human praise.O I clung to the rim of the cliffs of HellAnd called on an empty Name —Till there dropped the tears of a weeping TruthAnd saved my soul from the flame.So I hid my soul in a maiden's hair,And climbed to a clearer view —And I found I had lied to a lying God,And the myth I had sung - was true! "
6 " At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter’s, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn’t, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called “Real America,” and I know it rankles some folks—city folks, mostly—something awful, and I wish I could tell them it’s only done out of politeness. That it’s only people saying nice things about the dying. "
― Jason Miller , Red Dog (Slim in Little Egypt, #2)
7 " Since its sudden birth the city had expanded, swallowing up acre upon acre of the surrounding grasslands and drawing thousands into its domain. Hardly built on the most advantageous ground, miles from the open waters, decades from the mines at the mountain summits, it yet remained the only settlement of note on the isle. This sprawling mass of a city, once a compact kingdom, was now the keystone of the Castilian Empire. "
8 " Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them. "
