John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
“A darkness lies behind us; and we have turned our backs on it, and we do not desire to return thither even in thought. Westwards our hearts have been turned, and we believe that there we shall find Light.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Húrin
“A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Húrin
“A sister they had, Galadriel, most beautiful of all the house of Finwë; her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“A small oversight, but it proved fatal. Small oversights often do.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“A traitor may betray himself and do good he does not intend.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“A woman must share her husband’s love with his work and the fire of his spirit, or make him a thing not loveable.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“According to the same traditions Galador was the son of Imrazôr the Númenórean, who dwelt in Belfalas, and the Elven-lady Mithrellas. She was one of the companions of Nimrodel, among many of the Elves that fled to the coast about the year 1980 of the Third Age, when evil arose in Moria; and Nimrodel and her maidens strayed in the wooded hills, and were lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper bags”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tree and Leaf
“After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“Alive without breath,
J.R.R. Tolkien
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.”
The Hobbit
“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tree and Leaf
“Amidst of these was a great green sward of grass smooth as a web of stuffs.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book of Lost Tales
“An honest hand and a true heart may hew amiss; and the harm may be harder to bear than the work of a foe.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“And amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“And she looked at him and saw the grave tenderness in his eyes, and yet knew, for she was bred among men of war, that here was one whom no Rider of the Mark could outmatch in battle.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“And what more can hobbits do? They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set against things more elemental.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“As he walked away, he discovered an odd thing: the Forest, of course, was a distant Forest, yet he could approach it, even enter it, without its losing that particular charm.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“As she stood before Aragorn she paused suddenly and looked upon him, and her eyes were shining. And he looked down upon her fair face and smiled; but as he took the cup, his hand met hers, and he knew that she trembled at the touch.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above the mists of the world, such was her glory and her loveliness; and in her face was a shining light.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“Behold, the Moon dares not the utter loneliness of the outer dark by reason of his lesser light and majesty, and he journeys still beneath the world and many are the chances of that way; wherefore is it that he is often less timely than the Sun and is more fickle. Sometimes he comes not after Sári at all, and other times is late and maketh but a little voyage or even dares the heavens while Urwendi still is there. Then smile the Gods wistfully and say: “It is the mingling of the lights once more.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book of Lost Tales
“But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“But if a waking writer tells you that his tale is only a thing imagined in his sleep, he cheats deliberately the primal desire at the heart of Faërie: the realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“But this book does not offer a single page of original and unpublished work. What then is the need, now, for such a book?”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“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?”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!” he said, and it became a proverb, though we now say ‘out of the frying-pan into the fire’ in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“Every man has something too dear to trust to another.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“Evidently we look so much alike that your desire to make an incurable dent in my hat must be excused.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“Faerie cannot be caught in a net of words, for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible. It has many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold…The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“Faithful heart may have forward tongue.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“False hopes are more dangerous than fears.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Húrin
“Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific veracity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will make it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“Far off there was a great hill of shadow, and out of that shadow, which was its root, he saw the King’s Tree springing up, tower upon tower, into the sky, and its light was like the sun at noon; and it bore at once leaves and flowers and fruits uncounted, and not one was the same as any other that grew on The Tree.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Smith of Wootton Major
“Far over the misty mountains cold
J.R.R. Tolkien
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.
For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.
On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.
Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.
The pines were roaring on the height,
The wind was moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.
The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.
The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.
Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!”
The Hobbit
“Farmer Giles went home feeling very uncomfortable. He was finding that a local reputation may require keeping up, and that may prove awkward.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham
“Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and try to have patience, if you can.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man’s heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world’s end.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“For the valour of the Edain the Elves shall ever remember as the ages lengthen, marvelling that they gave life so freely of which they had on earth so little.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“He came round a shoulder of the mountain like a ton of thunderbolts, with a noise like a gale and a gust of red lightning.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham
“He stands not alone. You would die before your stroke fell.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“He thought this was very kind, and he did not realize that, even if it was kind, it was not kind enough.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tree and Leaf
“He was kindhearted, in a way. You know the sort of kind heart: it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything; and even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper and swearing (mostly to himself).”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“Help means ruin and saving means slaying.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet also less incalculable and remote: one of the Kings of Men born into a later time, but touched with the wisdom and sadness of the Eldar Race. He knew now why Beregond spoke his name with love. He was a captain that men would follow, that he would follow, even under the shadow of the black wings.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Here you find us sitting on a field of victory, amid the plunder of armies, and you wonder how we came by a few well-earned comforts!”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“Home is behind, the world ahead,
J.R.R. Tolkien
and there are many paths to tread
through shadows to the edge of night,
until the stars are all alight.”
The Lord of the Rings
“How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“I did nothing but run away from the time I was a puppy, and I kept on running and roving until one fine morning – a very fine morning, with the sun in my eyes – I fell over the world’s edge chasing a butterfly.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“I have passed through fire and deep water, since we parted. I have forgotten much that I thought I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“If I choose to send thee, Tuor son of Huor, then believe not that thy one sword is not worth the sending.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“If most of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“If this nice friendliness would spread out in Mordor, half our trouble would be over.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don’t know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“I’ll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,” said Sam. “And I’ll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“In describing a fairy story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: ‘this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty’. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that begun thus: ‘this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy’; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tree and Leaf
“In that dale the light was like a red sunset, but the light came up from the lake – and there he beheld strange shapes of flame bending and branching and wavering like great weeds in a sea dingle, and fiery creatures went to and fro among them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Smith of Wootton Major
“In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
J.R.R. Tolkien
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills,
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.”
The Hobbit
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. 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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“It is said by the Eldar that in water their lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“It is said that he was the first of Men to reach the Great Sea, and that none, save the Eldar, have ever felt more deeply the longing that it brings.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would rather have stayed there in peace.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“It’s more comfortable standing still thinking of nothing.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“Macbeth is indeed a work by a playwright who ought, at least on this occasion, to have written a story, if he had the skill or patience for that art.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“Many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet. She did much good among us at much cost. Her heart was not faint, and patience will break at the last.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Húrin
“Many are the strange chances of the world,’ said Mithrandir, ‘and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“Many of the most popular children’s stories have their roots in tales invented for particular children, and this casual, often serendipitous, approach produces a stream of ideas which are later refined into great literature. With Tolkien’s shorter stories and poems, I am even more aware of the presence of the author, and his children. There are elements and events that are so strikingly original that they could only arise as a result of observations and conversations ignited by two or more lively minds.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“No doubt some who deserved to be asked were overlooked, and some who did not were invited by mistake; for that is the way of things, however careful those who arrange such matters may try to be.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Smith of Wootton Major
“No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“No one, I fancy, would discredit a story that the Archbishop of Canterbury slipped on a banana skin merely because he found that a similar comic mishap had been reported of many people, and especially of elderly gentlemen of dignity.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tree and Leaf
“No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Húrin
“Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Rivers of fire at dead of night
J.R.R. Tolkien
in winter lying cold and white
upon the plain burst forth, and high
the red was mirrored in the sky.”
Beren and Lúthien
“Roads go ever ever on,
J.R.R. Tolkien
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains of the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known”
The Hobbit
“Rover did not know in the least where the moon’s path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.”
J .R.R. Tolkien
Roverandom
“Say rather that the Ring has no power over him. He is his own master. But he cannot alter the Ring itself, nor break its power over others. And now he is withdrawn into a little land, within bounds that he has set, though none can see them, waiting perhaps for a change of days, and he will not step beyond them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Small is the dwelling, but smaller still are they that dwell here—for all who enter must be very small indeed, or of their own good wish become as very little folk even as they stand upon the threshold.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book of Lost Tales
“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers. But some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not Today. Good morning! But please come to tea -any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Good bye!”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“The blind was down; but outside the moon rose up out of the sea, and laid the silver path across the waters that is the way to places at the edge of the world and beyond, for those that can walk on it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“The Company of the Ring shall be Nine; and the Nine Walkers shall be set against the Nine Riders that are evil.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“The farmer went about with a high step, and luck smiled on him. The autumn and early winter work went well. All seemed set fair, until the dragon came.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham
“The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“The magic of Faërie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations: among these are the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires. One of these desires is to survey the depths of space and time. Another is (as will be seen) to hold communion with other living things. A story may thus deal with the satisfaction of these desires, with or without the operation of either machine or magic, and in proportion as it succeeds it will approach the quality and have the flavour of fairy-story.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“The misty morning crawleth grey from dusk to the reluctant day.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“The Silmarillion’ was intended to move the heart and the imagination, directly, and without peculiar effort or the possession of unusual faculties; but its mode is inherent, and it may be doubted whether any ‘approach’ to it can greatly aid those who find it unapproachable.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book of Lost Tales
“The slow time passed. Then in the gloom
J.R.R. Tolkien
two eyes there glowed. He saw his doom,
Beren, silent, as his bonds he strained
beyond mortal might enchained.
Lo! sudden there was rending sound
of chains that parted and unwound,
of meshes broken. Forth there leaped
upon the wolvish thing that crept
in shadow faithful Felagund,
careless of fang or mortal wound.”
Beren and Lúthien
“The spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally refuse to worship any of the hydras’ heads.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it’s no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won’t come.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“The woman turned and went slowly into the house. As she passed the doors she turned and looked back. Grave and thoughtful was her glance, as she looked on the king with cool pity in here eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Then he called him Maeglin, which is Sharp Glance, for he perceived that the eyes of his son were more piercing than his own, and his thought could read the secrets of hearts beyond the mist of words.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“There are in any case many heroes but very few good dragons.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“There is an inn, a merry old inn
J.R.R. Tolkien
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.”
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“There was a merry passenger, a messenger, a mariner: he built a gilded gondola to wander in, and had in her a load of yellow oranges and porridge for his provender; he perfumed her with marjoram and cardamon and lavender.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tales from the Perilous Realm
“There was a merry passenger,
J.R.R. Tolkien
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.”
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
“There was one giant in particular, larger and more stupid than his fellows. I find no mention of his name in the histories, but it does not matter. He was very large, his walking stick was like a tree, and his tread was heavy. He brushed elms aside like tall grasses.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham
“There were lights in the dale and the sound of rugged song. Then Felagund marvelled, for the tongue of those songs was not the tongue of Eldar or of Dwarves. Nor was it the tongue of Orcs, though this at first he feared.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
J.R.R. Tolkien
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.”
Tree and Leaf
“They sat beside the stone, and did not speak again; and when the sun went down Morwen sighed and clasped his hand, and was still; and Hurin knew that she died. He looked down at her in the twilight and it seemed to him that the lines of grief and cruel hardship were smoothed away.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“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!”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
“This then was the reason for his great secrecy in all his dealings with the Shire, even from the first before any shadow of doubt had fallen upon it, and it was little guarded, free for those who wished to enter.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“Thou smallest of dog, and what news of good came ever to a cat from a fairy that had had dealings with the dogs?”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“Though it may be better for children to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
On Fairy-Stories
“To him that is pitiless the deeds of pity are ever strange and beyond reckoning.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion
“To seek for the meaning is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Smith of Wootton Major
“Together we will take the road that leads into the West,
J.R.R. Tolkien
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.”
The Two Towers
“Too swift for thought his onset came,
J.R.R. Tolkien
too swift for any spell to tame;
and Beren desperate then aside
thrust Lúthien, and forth did stride
unarmed, defenceless to defend
Tinúviel until the end.”
Beren and Lúthien
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“We meet again, at the turn of the tide. A great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
“Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Yes, it is difficult,” I answered. “But not impossibly difficult, or I would not waste my time here. I would say absurdly difficult.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth
“Yet even as he spake the shadows of Mandos lay upon his face, and his spirit fled in that hour to the margin of the world, and Tinúviel’s tender kisses called him not back.” (J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beren and Lúthien
“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor 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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
“You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers
“You never know what will happen next, when once you get mixed up with wizards and their friends.”
J .R.R. Tolkien
Roverandom
“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.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
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