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.

If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.

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.

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.

Never laugh at live dragons.

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.

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.

Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.

Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

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.

Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

Yet in doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom.

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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.

I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.

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

False hopes are more dangerous than fears.

The guest who has escaped from the roof, will think twice before he comes back in by the door.

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.

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?

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 be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

Dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money.

It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began,

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Where there's a whip there's a will, my slugs.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.

Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.

The chances, the changes are all yours to make.

The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

If we all got angry together something might be done.

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. ... But this story has entered History and the primary world; ... It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality." There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. ...this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men--and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

Time does not tarry ever ... but change and growth is not in all things and places alike.

It is a comfort not to be mistaken at all points.

Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret; for wonder makes the words of praise louder.

It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? 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 ... that have taken hold.

I am personally immensely amused by hobbits as such, and can contemplate them eating and making their rather fatuous remarks indefinitely; but I find that is not the case with even my most devoted fans.

Short cuts make delays, but inns make longer ones

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

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