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Touching your cap to the Squire may be damn bad for the Squire, but it's damn good for you.
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No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.
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It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.
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Without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.
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Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.
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Seek for the Sword that was broken In Imladris it dwells; There shall be counsels taken Stronger than Morgul-spells. There shall be shown a token That Doom is near at hand, For Isuldur's Bane shall waken, And the halfling forth shall stand.
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Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. "You aren't nearly through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty true as well.
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That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, is say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.
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The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
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Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights.' 'No,' said Merry. 'I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not.
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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.
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For it is easier to shout 'Stop', than to do it.
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Each of us embodies, in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time & place, universal truth and everlasting life.
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If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time ... human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.
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You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.
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Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.
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Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.
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Speak, or I will put a dint in your hat that even a wizard will find hard to deal with!
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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.
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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.
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You cannot pass," he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.
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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.
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For nothing is evil in the beginning.
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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?" A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.