J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes

Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!

If we was master, then we could help ourselves.

Gandalf: Often does hatred hurt itself!

Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.

This is the ending. Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fear pass away.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)—Gandalf came by.

As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches .

The arts are the best Time Machine we have." C. S. Lewis

It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.

Against delay. Against the way that seems easier. Against refusal of the burden that is laid on me. Against - well, if it must be said, against trust in the strength and truth of Men.

Imagination pointed toward truth but could not disclose it directly.

Like all great readers, he could create for himself a "wall of stillness".

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

Far over misty mountains coldTo dungeons deep and caverns oldWe must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.

Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.

Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.

In account after account of exorcisms the demonic voices will propound nihilism of one variety or another.

Now and again he spoke to those that served him and thanked them in their own language. They smiled at him and said laughing: 'Here is a jewel among hobbits!

Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.

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

And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.

It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.

Perhaps it is better not to tell what you wish. if you cannot have it.

We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.

I wisely started with a map.

We still thought that we were the only two people in the world who were interested in the right kind of things in the right kind of way. C.S. Lewis

The author observes of the Inklings, "they make a perfect compass rose of faith: talking the Catholic, Lewis the "mere Christian, " Williams the Anglican, Barfield the esotericist.

Barfield understood his epochal experience are not as a rebound from love sickness, but as a spiritual epiphany that cured a spiritual illness.

The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

Lewis was studying literary history with the present and future in mind.

There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

Recovery is the ability to see things with clarity, "freed from the drab blur of greatness or familiarity – from possessiveness.

Kindness and pain, joy and suffering are twins in this fallen world.

They were at the end of their journey, but as far as ever, it seemed, from the end of their quest.

It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.

Wise men speak only of what they know

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do no be too eager to deal out death in judgment.

Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate.

please don't cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean.

Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother’s elder brother.

While persistence offers no guarantees, it does give 'luck' a chance to operate.

I'm going on an adventure

We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.

The unavoidable harshness of life surprised none of them, for they were Christians one and all, believing that they inhabited a fallen world, albeit one filled with God's grace.