J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

“I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate. . . If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

“You ought not to be rude to an eagle, when you are only the size of a hobbit, and are up in hid eyrie at night!”

“Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate.”

“For victory is victory, however small, nor is its worth only from what follows from it.”

“Over hill and under hill”

“It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.”

“After some while Bilbo became impatient. "Well, what is it?" he said. "The answer's not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think by the noise you are making.”

“Then Aragorn stooped and looked in her face, and it was indeed white as a lily, cold as frost, and hard as graven stone. But he bent and kissed her on the brow, and called her softly, saying: 'Éowyn Éomund's daughter, awake! For your enemy has passed away!' - Aragorn & Éowyn”

“I'm going on an adventure!”

“Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea.”

“Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?”

“Help means ruin and saving means slaying.”

“Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.' It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli. I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas. I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]”

“One has personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”

“The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it.”

“And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world.”

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”

“But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.”

“True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”

“For you do not yet know the strengths of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet on the road.”

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

“A nice pickle they were all in now: all neatly tied up in sacks, with three angry trolls (and two with burns and bashes to remember) sitting by them, arguing whether they should roast them slowly, or mince them fine and boil them, or just sit on them one by one and squash them into jelly.”

“And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on.”

“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”