Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother’s elder brother.
A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.
The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.
Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Solitary confinement has been used extensively, it always has. I was in prison for 44 years; it was a normal part of life - the practice of it. They put you in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons, they put you in solitary confinement to protect you from violence or whatever, and they also put you in solitary confinement just to show you who has got the power. . . It's not something new; it's just something that nobody really cared about in the past.
Courage is. . . the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
Perhaps fortunately, no one has ever found out what it would be like to have all his wishes fulfilled.