J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

“Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and strive for patience, if you can.”

“Green are the leaves I leave in Mirkwood.”

“There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.”

“My Precious, my Precious.”

“Time doesn't seem to pass here: it just is.”

“If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.”

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”

“Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.”

“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!”

“What does your heart tell you?”

“Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.... That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.”

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).”

“I wished to be loved by another. But I desire no man's pity.”

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

“The wise speak only of what they know”

“Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.”

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't 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, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”

“Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”

“Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!”

“The stars are far brighter Than gems without measure, The moon is far whiter Than silver in treasure; The fire is more shining On hearth in the gloaming Than gold won by mining, So why go a-roaming? O! Tra-la-la-lally Come back to the Valley.”

“What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”

“I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.”

“The war made me poignantly aware of the beauty of the world.”

“The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”