Tuesday 26 March 2024

One Path

sed in magna copia rerum aliud alii natura iter ostendit

But in the grand scheme of things, nature shows one path to one person, and another path to another.

Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 2. My translation.

     He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London: HarperCollins, 1995; 1954-55), p. 72.