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Even for the Elves, the world moves. It moves very quickly at times, and very slowly at others. The quickness is because they themselves change not at all, but everything else passes away swiftly. This is sad for them. The slowness means that they have no need to count the passing years—they do not count them for themselves, at any rate. The passing seasons are just waves endlessly repeated on a long, long river. But everything that exists beneath the sun must have an end.

- Legolas (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

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Feeling time move fast - Because the world changes rapidly while they, the immortal ones, do not change at all, the flow of the world seems to pass by too quickly.

Feeling time move slow - Conversely, because they repeatedly experience the endless cycles of seasons and changes countless times, the world simultaneously feels like it's flowing slowly.

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Elves don't die, but even as immortals, they can't avoid the changes of the world (like the death of others, such as humans), leading them to constantly experience grief and loss.

Because of this, Tolkien portrays Elves as 'beings who live with sorrow,' or 'tormented immortals.'

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"Yet the Elves are not entirely good or righteous. Not because they allied with Sauron, but because they were 'corpse-preservers.' They wanted to eat their cake and have it too; they sought to remain in the historical, mortal Middle-earth (perhaps because they liked it, or maybe because they enjoyed the advantages of a superior caste), and so they tried to halt change and history, to stop growth, and keep it as a pleasure-garden, or even largely as a desert. There, they could be 'artists.' And they were heavily burdened by grief and nostalgic regret." "...we see a kind of second Fall, or at least an 'error,' of the Elves. Sadly, there was nothing inherently wrong with them remaining in the mortal lands of their ancient heroic deeds against counsel. But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted the peace, happiness, and perfect memory of the 'West,' but simultaneously sought to remain in the ordinary lands where their prestige was greater—as the highest caste above the wild Elves, Dwarves, and Men—than they would be at the bottom of the hierarchy in Valinor. They thus became obsessed with 'fading,' and that was how the changes of time (the law of the world beneath the Sun) were perceived by them. They grew sorrowful, and their arts (as it were) became antiquated, and all their efforts were really a form of corpse-preservation—even though they still maintained their race's ancient motives: to adorn the land and heal its wounds."

According to Tolkien, this obsession stemming from their perception of time seems to be one of the Elven race's worst flaws.