The Hobbit

• "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the end of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
  The Hobbit (1937) ch. 1 An Unexpected Party
• "What do you mean?"he said."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?"
  Gandalf to Bilbo The Hobbit (1937) ch. 1 An Unexpected Party
• "Never laugh at live dragons."
  The Hobbit (1937) ch. 12 Inside Information
• "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benifit?"
  Gandalf to Bilbo The Hobbit (1937) ch. 19 The Last Stage

The Fellowship of the Ring

• "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
  The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) epigraph
• "Gandalf was shorter in stature than the other two; but his lon white hair, his sweeping beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend. In his aged face under great snowy brows his eyes were set like coals that could suddenly burst into fire."
  The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) Many Meetings
• "Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
  The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) Three is Company
• "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens"
  Gimli addressing Elrond
  The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) The Ring goes south
• "Deserves it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise cannot see all ends"
  Gandalf talking to Frodo about Gollum
  The Fellowship of the Ring, The Shadow of the Past
• "Radagast the Brown! Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool! Yet he had just the wit to play the part I set him. For you have come, and that was the purpose of my message. And here you shall stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from your journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!"
  Gandalf recounting Saruman The Fellowship of the Ring, Council of Elrond
• "'And he who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom'"
  Gandalf recounting speaking to Saruman The Fellowship of the Ring, Council of Elrond

The Two Towers

• "'One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or the ripples of a very deep lake.'"
  Pippin describing Fangorn's eyes, The Two Towers (1954), Treebeard
• "Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped."
  Treebeard, The Two Towers, Treebeard
• "A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful; and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens of Gondor upon the West, and wise men that watched the stars. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived - for all those arts and subtle devices for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dűr, The Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding it's time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength."
  The Two Towers, The Road to Isengard
• "'Not this way, master!' he pleaded. 'There is another way. O yes indeed there is. Another way, darker, more difficult to find, more secret. But Smeagol knows it. Let Smeagol show you!'"
  Gollum The Two Towers, The Black Gate is Closed
• "Sleep! I feel the need of it, as never I thought any dwarf could , riding is tiring work. Yet my axe is restless in my hand. Give me a row of orc-necks and room to swing and all weariness will fall from me!"
  Gimli The Two Towers, Helm's Deep

The Return of the King

• "'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words.
  'That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,' said Legolas. 'If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising.'
  'And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,' said Gimli. 'It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.'
  'Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,' said Legolas. 'And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.'
  'And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,' said the Dwarf.
  'To that the Elves know not the answer,' said Legolas."
  The Return of the King, The Last Debate
• "'Sleep again, and do not be afraid!' said Gandalf. 'For you are not going like Frodo to Mordor, but to Minas Tirith, and there you will be as safe as you can be anywhere in these days. If Gondor falls, or the Ring is taken, then the Shire will be no refuge.'"
  The Return of the King, Minas Tirith

The Silmarillion

• "Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the music of the Ainur, which is the fate of all things else;"
  Illúvatar The Silmarillion, Of the Baginning of Days
The Silmarillion, Of Eldamar
• "Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue."
  Mandos The Silmarillion, Of the Flight of the Noldor
• "Then Fingolfin beheld (as it seemed to him) the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze , thinking Orome himself was come; for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband's gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat . And Morgoth came."
  The Silmarillion, Of the Ruin of Belriand
• "Farewell, O twice beloved! A Túrin Turambar turun ambartanen: master of doom by doom mastered! O happy to be dead!"
  Nienor The Silmarillion, Of Túrin Turambar
• "The Nazgűl were they; the Ringwraiths, the Enemy's most terribly servants; darkness went with them and they cried with the voices of death."
  The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

Tolkien on Middle-earth

• "Bingo Bolger-Baggins is a bad name. Let Bingo=Frodo."
  On the first draft of The Lord of the Rings, note, c.1938; Humphrey Carpenter J.R.R. Tolkien (1977)
• "The stories were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me name comes first and the story follows."
  Letter in the Observer newspaper,23 Aug 1981
• "The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless."
  Letters of JRR Tolkien, 25 April 1954, No. 144

Tolkien on other subjects

• "My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy. The most improper ob of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power stations. I hope that, encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit."
  Letter to his son Christopher (in the RAF), Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter.
• "'Trends in the Church are.....serious, escpecially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a 'pax' in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change."
  The Lion Christian Quotation Collection, p.321
• "A real taste for fairy-stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war."
  Tree and Leaf (1964), 'On Fairy-Stories'
• "Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to."
  Letters of JRR Tolkien, to Michael Tolkien, 6-8 March 1941, no. 43

Quotations about Tolkien

• "Though Tolkien lived in the twentieth century he can scarcely be considered a modern writer. His roots were buried feep in early literature, and the major names in twentieth-century writing meant little or nothing to him."
  Humphery Carpenter (The Inklings)
• "He is a smooth, pale, fluent little chap - can't read Spenser because of the forms - thinks all literature is for the amusement of men between thirty and forty... His pet abomination is the idea of 'liberal studies'. Technical hobbies are more in his line. No harm in him; only needs a smack or so."
  C.S. Lewis (1899-1963) British academic and writer, member of the Inklings, Diary, May 1926