“In the waters there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than any substance else that is in this Earth; and many […] hearken still unsated to the voice of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”

“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”

“Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashipn the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.”

“In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.”

“Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.”

“Mercy!" cried Gandalf. "If the giving of knowledge is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more should you like to know?""The names of all the stars, and of all living things, and the whole history of Middle-Earth and Over-heave and of the Sundering Seas," laughed Pippin. "Of course! What less?”

“Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,for ever blest, since here did lieand here with lissom limbs did runbeneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,Lúthien Tinúvielmore fair than Mortal tongue can tell.Though all to ruin fell the worldand were dissolved and backward hurled;unmade into the old abyss,yet were its making good, for this―the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea―that Lúthien for a time should be.”