It's Inklings Week! Starting With: Who Said That?
A Look at Where Popular Inklings Quotes Actually Come From by Wesley H.
(Welcome to Inklings Week 2023. You can find all the posts here. You can also subscribe for free and not miss a post!)
It’s another year and another Inklings Week! It’s always my favorite time of the year for my writing. I get to connect with fellow fans and we can be inspired and encouraged. I hope you’ll join in with comments and in the discussions!
We’re kicking off this week with a wonderful post from Wesley. Wesley has been a longtime Inklings friend (and regular friend :) and is one the original people to join. I’m so glad she still wants to be a part of it each year :) So welcome Wesley!
Hello everyone! I’m pleased as punch to be with you for Inklings Week 2023!
I was on Etsy the other day mindless scrolling (it’s better for my brain then aimlessly scrolling through TikTok – though that also happens), favoriting things I will never buy and because the algorithm knows I have a dog I was served up some cute dog tags. One of them said “Not all who wander are lost, but I am”. Did it make me laugh? Yes. Did it make me think that the person might not know the context of that quote? Probably not. Not to dig on that seller, some very popular quotes from our friends Lewis and Tolkien show up in a lot of places where the context doesn’t really make sense. I decided that my post for this year would be taking a closer look at famous quotes, where they come from, and maybe why they resonate with people so much.
I am also including a personal favorite quote, because it’s my post and I can do what I wantttttttttt, haha.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
So, I have already spoiled the big surprise and told you that the source material is not dog tags. This quote comes from The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically Chapter 10, Book 1. It’s actually part of a poem that Gandalf sends to Frodo, and it’s used to help Frodo confirm Strider/Aragorn’s identity. When Aragorn enters the story in Fellowship, he’s a man at odds with his past and uncomfortable and uncertain at what his future will look like. Since we know how Aragorn’s story ends we know that he is not lost, he’s just taking awhile to get to where he needs to be.
When I think on this quote it makes me think of another quote “healing isn’t linear.” Sometimes it’s not a straight line to go from where we are to where we need to be – and that’s okay!
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
This quote is coming to us from the beloved classic The Hobbit, specifically Chapter 18. The Battle of the Five Armies is over and Thorin says these words to Bilbo as he dies. Thorin and Bilbo are at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as lifestyle wants are concerned. Bilbo is the ultimate homebody who lives a contented life in the Shire. Thorin (especially as the book goes on) has a hunger for glory and gold that changes his life. With this quote, Thorin muses that maybe Bilbo had the right idea. I mean, a world that was run by people who prioritized greed and gold would probably not be a great world.
Look, we all need gold to pay for food, housing and AppleTV subscriptions so we can eyeball Trent Crimm. No one is disputing that. But the second that we make the pursuit of that wealth at the forefront of everything we do, I think Thorin might have some words for us.
“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.”
This is the quote that I picked just because I like it. It comes from The Two Towers and is spoken by Faramir. It’s set up as a juxtaposition to Boromir who has a different feeling about these same things. Sometimes we can justify and glorify violence if it’s for a “good cause” and this is an attitude we need to check because we are missing the point.
And now on to C.S. Lewis! Honestly, these quotes are less “what could this possibly mean?!” and more like “Oh, that was C.S. Lewis and not some other random misquote on the internet?”
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
This is a main one that I see puttering around on the internet. This is from the classic The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe (which is the first book of The Chronicles of Narnia series and I will not be told differently. Don’t @ me.) This is actually from the dedication to his goddaughter Lucy Barfield, where C.S. laments that by the time he writes this book and it’s published, that it’s intended audience might be too old for the book but that he is confident that…you know…see above quote. I do like the irony of this one because I feel like the Narnia series are ageless. You get different things out of them at the different ages that you read them so no matter what, these books are ready for you!
“Courage, dear heart.”
This is not a quote that you can really misquote, but I just wanted to point out where it is from and it’s context. It’s from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in The Chronicles of Narnia series. The Dawn Treader is sailing in darkness towards something unknown and terrifying and the crew is feeling despair. Lucy quietly whispers a prayer to Aslan for help, and shortly thereafter an albatross leads them to safety. Lucy was the only one to hear “Courage, dear heart” whispered by the helpful albatross before it flys away. This is just…so lovely.
"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
And here’s the quote that’s here just because I like it, haha. This quote is from Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 11. Obviously it would not be out of place to put the whole of Mere Christianity in this post but this post can’t be forever long so I just had to pick one. Sometimes when I’m feeling sad/weird/disconcerted/anxious and then I drink water/get sleep/eat something/make sure I took my meds and still don’t feel quite right, I think of this quote. Maybe that weird feeling that we get sometimes is just knowing that this place, in this time, is not our forever – there is unimaginable goodness ahead of us, just around the edge of our understanding.
Thank you so much Wesley! What do you think of these quotes? What are some of your favorite ones? And please do share if you’ve seen a funny out of context quote!
Wesley is a reader and blogger extraordinaire! Be sure to follow her for plenty of book recs and bookish chatter. You can find her at http://libraryeducated.blogspot.com/, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/whoffs, and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/whoffs/.