5:54 PM :: Stephen (contact)

Thought for the day: A choice quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, comparing the worlds of fantasy with modern architecture:

Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose--an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king--that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not--unless it was built before our time.

(From "On Fairy-Stories," the Andrew Lang Lecture delivered at the University of St. Andrews, March 8, 1939. Reprinted in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien.)