Looking For Quotes About Morgoth

[Nikkolas]

A guy on another site said this:

This is on the same track as my line of thinking. If Morgoth made them, he could not give them life from Eru's Flame Imperishable because nobody else has access to it. The only other option would be to use his own Life Energy; in that sense, the orcs would not really be separate individuals, but extensions of Morgoth; essentially, Morgoth and the orcs (and trolls and dragons) would be one life-form with multiple bodies and minds, with all the others being subordinate to Morgoth's will and sense of morality.

And I'm sure he's right but I can't find the exact quote saying Morgoth let his power go into his minions. Does anyone have it?

I also feel like there's another quote that isn't in The Sil that talks about how shocked the victors were after the War of Wrath. They found Morgoth cowering in Angband and couldn't believe hoe diminished he was. If anyone could tell me where that quote is, I'd appreciate that too.

[Mugwump]

I've been away from this forum for a while so I don't know what else has been said about this, but as I'm sure others must have mentioned, Tolkien wrote that "it is said" that orcs were, in origin, corrupted Elves captured by Melkor/Morgoth before the beginning of the First Age and bred (according to the laws of genetics, presumably) according to the attributes he preferred, in which case their "Flame Imperishable," i.e., life essence, consciousness, etc., came from Eru.

I don't have access to my copy of the Silmarillion and other texts so I can't provide the quotations you're looking for, but as I recall Morgoth was diminished because he put his life essence not only into the Ring, but also into creating his physical body.

[Belegorn]

Nikko, the only thing I can compare this to is with Aulë when he created the dwarves. They were like machines that could only move when he made them move and Eru pointed this out to him.

Originally Posted by Of Aulë and Yavanna

thou has from me as a gift thy own being only, and no more; and therefore the creatures of thy hand and mind can live only by that being, moving when thou thinkest to move them, and if thy thought be elsewhere, standing idle.

In Myths Transformed from Morgoth's Ring, Manwë and Melkor look at each other:

Both are amazed: Manwë to perceive the decrease in Melkor as a person; Melkor to perceive this also from his own point of view: he has now less personal force than Manwë, and can no longer daunt him with his gaze.

In Of the Coming of the Elves there is a passage that says Melkor cannot create life or its semblence.

naught that had life of its own, nor the semblence of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before the Beginning.

There is another passage where it discusses what Melkor did with the Elves he had captured. He bred orcs from them via "slow arts of cruelty".

[Inziladun]

There are a couple more relevant quotes from The Silmarillion.

In the powers and knowledge of all the other Valar [Melkor] had part, but he turned them to evil purposes and squandered his strength in violence and tyranny.

Valaquenta

And this:

....[Morgoth's] hatred devoured him, and in the domination of his servants and the inspiring of them with lust of evil he spent his spirit.

Of the Flight of the Noldor

Tolkien said of Sauron that he also wasted his own native power in domination of his servants. He certainly 'inspired' them with rage and hate as well. If that was the case with Sauron, servant of Melkor, it would have been many times more magnified in his master.

[Pitchwife]

The quote your friend was thinking about, Nikkolas, may be this from HoME X, Morgoth's Ring:

Originally Posted by Melkor Morgoth in the Myths Transformed section

But Melkor had already progressed some way towards becoming 'the Morgoth, a tyrant (or central tyranny and will), + his agents'. Only the total contained the old power of the complete Melkor; so that if 'the Morgoth' could be reached or temporarily separated from his agents he was much more nearly controllable and on a power-level with the Valar.

The quote about Manwë and Melkor that Beregorn gave is a few lines down in the same text. There is also in Myths Transformed a lot of Tolkien debating with himself to and fro whether Orcs were corrupted Elves or Men, or semi-intelligent beasts, or lower-ranking Ainur incarnate, or what not.

[Belegorn]

At least in the Silmarillion the orcs could hardly be from Men since they arose with the Sun and the Orcs were already fighting Fëanor and his host at that time.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

In Myths Transformed from Morgoth's Ring, Manwë and Melkor look at each other:

This quote was what I thought of as well. It's worth noting, incidentally, that this occurs at the conclusion of the Battle of the Powers, and not the War of Wrath, the point being that even by the end of the siege of Utumno the Valar were astonished at how greatly Morgoth had been diminished.

While I think I once considered here the idea of "miniature Morgoths" in the shape of the Orcs and so forth, I don't think there's a hard and fast quote for it. It was just an extension of the idea, which others have provided quotes for in this thread, that Morgoth "spent his power on his servants", and I was speculating as to what the utter limit or extent of that might have been.

[Belegorn]

Supposing Melkor did create Orcs from some sort of process he engaged in with the Elves, did he have the power to change the Doom of a species? For example, Elves have life in Arda so long as it endures unless killed by weapons, or death from grief. This would mean the Orcs are immortal in this sense as well. I believe there are various places where it is mentioned that none has the power to do this. In The Debate of Finrod and Andreth Finrod does bring this up and it seems like he quakes with fear at the thought that Melkor could hold such power. I also wonder would an Elf even hold on so long to be twisted in such a manner to become an Orc and not die from grief instead? Melkor is so much stronger than any one of his contemporaries and perhaps he was a bit beyond their own understanding as well?

The idea of Melkor harvesting his essence to create mini-mes seems like it could work. He's not necessarily creating life but in some manner using chunks of himself as independent entities that do have some ties to him. Perhaps he found a way to get around the Flame Imperishable in this manner. This would seem to fit in well with Tolkien's idea of the Morgoth in Myths Transformed as Pitchwife has quoted. Melkor dispersed.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

Supposing Melkor did create Orcs from some sort of process he engaged in with the Elves, did he have the power to change the Doom of a species?

Professor Tolkien does speculate upon this in one of the passages found in Morgoth's Ring:

It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in the Orcs. These may then even have been mated with beasts (sterile!) - and later Men. Their life-span would be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison till the End.

So it is possible that Orcs lost their "immortality" by their interbreeding with Men and perhaps in their general corruption. As Professor Tolkien points out, Elves were not actually "immortal" in any event, only extremely longeval, so their corruption into Orcs may have simply hastened their natural (if extraordinarily long) mortality.

Originally Posted by Belegorn

The idea of Melkor harvesting his essence to create mini-mes seems like it could work. He's not necessarily creating life but in some manner using chunks of himself as independent entities that do have some ties to him. Perhaps he found a way to get around the Flame Imperishable in this manner. This would seem to fit in well with Tolkien's idea of the Morgoth in Myths Transformed as Pitchwife has quoted. Melkor dispersed.

I notice this idea actually does come up in Morgoth's Ring as well:

It will there be seen that the wills of Orcs and Balrogs etc. are part of Melkor's power 'dispersed'. Their spirit is one of hate.

He doesn't really go into detail, however, so it's unclear exactly what "will" means. I might suggest, however, that this refers to the idea that their minds and purposes were directed by Morgoth, and this is something he expended great personal potency in doing, particularly by motivating them to a single purpose.

Perhaps it might be said that an Orc is an Eruhín corrupted by the "will" of Morgoth. Professor Tolkien goes on to say that even long after Morgoth's defeat Sauron was able to use Orcs because of their "Morgoth-ness":
"Also Morgoth not Sauron is the source of Orc-wills. Sauron is just another (if greater) agent. Orcs can rebel against him without losing their own irremediable allegiance to evil (Morgoth)."