Quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien

Ill get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind, said Sam. And Ill carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.

Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

Yes Said Gandalf; for it will be better to ride back three together than one alone. Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of out fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea

This was the first of the sorrows of Turin.

The whole thing is quite hopeless, so its no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably wont come.

Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!

Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify and direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him–as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial.

Where are Haldad my father, and Haldad my brother? If the king of Doriath fears a friendship between Haleth and those who have devoured her kin, then the ways of the Eldar are strange to Men.

I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. Also many of the older legends are purely mythological, and nearly all are grim and tragic: a long account of the disasters that destroyed the beauty of the Ancient World, from the darkening of Valinor to the Downfall of Numenor and the flight of Elendil.

Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies it can hardly be applied, unless super is taken merely as a superlative prefix. For it is man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural; whereas they are natural, far more natural than he. Such is their doom.

But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.

Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.

This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of the Emyn Muil, and down into the Land of Shadow.

I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no...

Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)—Gandalf came by.

So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Gandalf: Often does hatred hurt itself!

Its like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didnt want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end its only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines itll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didnt. They kept going because they were holding on to something.