J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

The treacherous are ever distrustful.

I wisely started with a map.

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.

Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.

I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to

Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.

End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim.
(I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept none for myself.)
(Gilraen's linnod)

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

I will take the Ring", he said, "though I do not know the way.

It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.

There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.

To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

Fair speech may hide a foul heart.