J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes
Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end.
Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.
Now and again he spoke to those that served him and thanked them in their own language. They smiled at him and said laughing: 'Here is a jewel among hobbits!
please don't cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean.
Touching your cap to the squire may be damn bad for the squire, but it's damn good for you.
His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril he cried aloud: 'I'm coming Mr. Frodo!
The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.
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 have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
The quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened.
A few melancholy birds were pipping and wailing, until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows; then an empty silence fell
For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows.
I invented that little rhyme about 'One Ring to rule them all', I remember, in the bath one day.
Things are drawing towards the end now, unless I am mistaken. There is an unpleasant time just in front of you; but keep your heart up!
Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.
Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.
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.
The only just literary critic," he concluded, "is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed.
Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.
Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?
And then alas! I let the matter reset, watching and waiting only, as we have too often done.
Where iss it, where iss it: my Precious, my Precious? It's ours, it is, and we wants it.
Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undómiel daughter of Elrond.
Indeed you did your best...I hope that it may be long before you find yourself in such a tight corner again between two such terrible old men. ~ Gandalf to Pippin
I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.
You will notice already that Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.
But you speak of Master Gandalf, as if he was in a story that had come to an end.' 'Yes, we do,' said Pippin sadly. 'The story seems to be going on, but I am afraid Gandalf has fallen out of it.
Ho! Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo! By water, wood and hill, by reed and willow, By fire, sun and moon, harken now and hear us! Come, Tom Bombadil, for our need is near us!
Speak, or I will put a dint in your hat that even a wizard will find hard to deal with!
Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father!" They cried to Thorin. "It is long enough without watering it!