J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

458 Sourced Quotes

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." — The Silmarllion, JRR Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien
For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more—remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.

J. R. R. Tolkien
I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can't a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?" "But it is not your own Shire," said Gildor. "Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.

J. R. R. Tolkien
For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Is it nice, my preciousss? Is it juicy? Is it scrumptiously crunchable?

J. R. R. Tolkien
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.

J. R. R. Tolkien
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
Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay.

J. R. R. Tolkien
There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie, till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn!

J. R. R. Tolkien
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.

J. R. R. Tolkien
Saruman," I said, standing away from him, "only one hand at a time can weild the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!

J. R. R. Tolkien
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 wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.

J. R. R. Tolkien
I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

J. R. R. Tolkien
No, my heart will not yet despair. Gandalf fell and has returned and is with us. We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.

J. R. R. Tolkien
I must indeed abide the Doom of Men whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Elves say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.

J. R. R. Tolkien
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
On C. S. Lewis' death:
So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.

J. R. R. Tolkien
I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day...

J. R. R. Tolkien
He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home - for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.

J. R. R. Tolkien