J. R. R. Tolkien famous quotes

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Life #Happiness #Music

There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Hope #Optimistic #Fighting

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

#Family #Book #Party

It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Revenge #Useless #Heal

No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Faith #Inspiration #Light

Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you've done since you left home.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Home #Lucky #Done

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Faith

Courage is found in unlikely places.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Courage #Travel #Bravery

Little by little, one travels far
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Wisdom

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. 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

#Faith #Stars #Heart

I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Sad #Grief #Evil

There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Laughing #Heaven #Together

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.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Lying #Adventure #Hands

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Fall #Practice #Grace

Adventures are not all pony-rides in May-sunshine.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Adventure #Sunshine #Ponies

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament....There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man's heart desires
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Blessed #Heart #Reality

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Moving #Dark #Men

True education is a kind of never ending story — a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts, of persistent newness.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Stories #Matter #Fresh Start

The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Faith #Blessed #Inspiration

Speak politely to an enraged dragon.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Dragons #Speak

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

#Life #Experience #Looks

Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Lightning

Don't go where I can't follow!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Hope #Doubt #Despair

Not all those who wander are lost.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspiring #Travel #Adventure

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Religious #Catholic #Revision

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Hope

It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Meaningful

There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Orcs #World #Rings

No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Dragons #Trying #Fascination

Short cuts make long delays.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Cutting #Long #Delay

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Dark #Light #May

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Travel

If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Protect #Life Or Death

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

#Heart #Hands #Sea

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Want

The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#People #Imagination #Size

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Self #Heroism #Self Preservation

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Believe #Long #Legends

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Faith #Blessed #Romance

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

#Life #Wisdom #Travel

Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Art #Magic #Humans

Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Wall #Heart #Hands

Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Inspirational #Life #Wise

My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Real #Names #Long

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Heart #Use #Wit

The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Hurt #War #World

I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Revenge #Bores

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Writing #Dark #Long

When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Summer #Dream #Lying

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

#Travel #Tree #Mountain

A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Hens #Beaks #Pens

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Good Morning #Morning #Shadow

History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Stuff #Myth

Eastward the dawn rose, ridge behind ridge into the morning, and vanished out of eyesight into guess; it was no more than a glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of the memory and old tales, of the high and distant mountains.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Morning #Memories #Climbing

For we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

You may not like my burglar, but please don't damage him.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#May #Damage #Please

Such is of 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

#Moving #Eye #Hands

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.' I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Adventure #Thinking #Dinner

I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Spring #Giving #Tree

For victory is victory, however small, nor is its worth only from what follows from it.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Victory

If you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite so many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Numbers #People #World

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." - Gandalf
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Secret #Tables #Wonder

I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. ... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Country #Drama #Hands

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

#Darkness #Shadow #World

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Religious #Cutting #Practice

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

#Moon #Path #Excited

Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Stars #Moon #Moonlight

Far more often [than asking the question 'Is it true?'] they [children] have asked me: 'Was he good? Was he wicked?' That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Children #Wicked #Important

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

#Spring #Sorrow #Sun

He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Eye #Glasses #Light

To think I should have lived to be goodmorninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Morning #Son #Thinking

I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Talking #Speak #Habit

Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Adventure #Stories #Ends

Above all shadows rides the sun.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Shadow #Sun

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Adventure #Share #Difficult

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Courage #Fire #Dragons

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.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Dirty #Mean #Smell

The wise speak only of what they know
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Wise #Speak

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Men #Political #Bombs

Handsome is as handsome does
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Doe #Handsome #Handsomeness

All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Faith #Inspiration #Simplicity

And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Fate #Simple #Evil

Frodo: Go back, Sam! I’m going to Mordor alone. Sam: Of course you are, and I’m coming with you!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Samwise Gamgee #Frodo #Mordor

It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

The burned hand teaches best.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Hands #Teach #Live By

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

#Nice #Juicy

A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Men #Doubt #Sometimes

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.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#May #Strange #Tales

You renounce your friendship even in the hour of our need ' he said. 'Yet you were glad indeed to receive our aid when you came at last to these shores fainthearted loiterers and well-nigh emptyhanded. In huts on the beaches would you be dwelling still had not the Noldor carved out your haven and toiled upon your walls.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Beach #Wall #Dwelling

Come, Mr. Frodo!' he cried. 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he'll go
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Giving #Samwise Gamgee #Frodo

His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Grief #Heart #Forget

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

#Good Morning #Mean #Feel Good

Each of us embodies, in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time & place, universal truth and everlasting life.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Uplifting #Garments #Tales

I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#And Love #Want #Eowyn

We meet again, at the turn of the tide. A great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Storm #Tides #Turns

There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#Dark #May #Ends

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

#Saying Goodbye #Years #Two

It needs but one foe to breed a war, and those who have not swords can still die upon them.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

#War #Needs #Foe