J.R.R. Tolkien

“An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.”

“It is grim reading’, he said. ‘I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall.... Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run: the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. I wonder what that means. The last thing written is in a trailing scrawl of elf-letters: they are coming. There is nothing more.’ Gandalf paused and stood in silent thought.”

“Maybe,’ said Gimli, ‘and I thank you for your words. True words doubtless; yet all such comfort is cold. Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror, be it as clear as Kheled-zâram.”

“¡Qué haremos, qué haremos! —gritó—. ¡Salir de trasgos para caer en lobos! —dijo, y esto llegó a ser un proverbio, aunque ahora decimos "de la sartén al fuego" en las situaciones incómodas de este tipo.”

“Faith then they vowedFast, unyielding,There each to eachIn oaths binding.Bliss there was bornWhen Brynhild woke;Yet fate is strongTo find its end.”

“¡Por qué, oh por qué habré dejado mi agujero—hobbit! —decía el pobre señorBolsón, mientras se sacudía hacia arriba y abajo sobre el pobre señor Bolsón, mientras se sacudía hacia arriba y abajo sobre la espalda de Bombur.—¡Por qué, oh por qué habré traído a este pobrecito hobbit, a buscar el tesoro! —decía el desdichado Bombur que era gordo, y se bamboleaba mientras el sudor le caía en gotas de la nariz a causa del calor y el terror.”

“No hay nada como mirar, si queréis encontrar algo. Cierto que casi siempre, se encuentra algo, si se mira, pero no siempre es lo que uno busca.”

“¿Dónde has ido, si puedo preguntártelo? —dijo Thorin a Gandalf mientras cabalgaban.A mirar adelante —respondió Gandalf.¿Y qué te hizo volver en el momento preciso?Mirar hacia atrás.”

“It is usually assumed that children are the natural or the specially appropriate audience for fairy-stories. In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: "this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty." But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: "this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy"; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate. Is there any essential connexion between children and fairy-stories? Is there any call for comment, if an adult reads them for himself? Reads them as tales, that is, not studies them as curios. Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper bags.”

“I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.”

“the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the “nursery,” as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.”

“Deseó salir y ver las montañas enormes, y oír los pinos y las cascadas, y explorar las cavernas, y llevar una espada en vez de un bastón.”

“We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things.”

“My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”

“Where is he?' said Frodo, looking round, as if he expected a masked and sinister figure to come out of a cupboard.”

“May the hair on his toes never fall out! all praise to his wine and ale!”

“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 hands of a king are the hands of a healer.”

“Follow what may, great deeds are not lessened in worth.”

“Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never.”

“The hasty stroke oft goes astray.”

“But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes.[…]Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.”

“What do you mean?" he said. "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?”

“Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of the trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords.”

“He never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning;but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope,as long as despair could be postponed.”

“Why? Why do the fools fly?' said Denethor. 'Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn!”

“Tienden a ser gruesos de vientre; visten de colores brillantes (sobre todo verde y amarillo); no usan zapatos, porque en los pies tienen suelas naturales de piel y un pelo espeso y tibio de color castaño, como el que les crece en las cabezas (que es rizado); los dedos son largos, mañosos y morenos, los rostros afables, y se ríen con profundas y jugosas risas (especialmente después de cenar, lo que hacen dos veces al día, cuando pueden).”

“En un agujero en el suelo, vivía un hobbit. No un agujero húmedo, sucio,repugnante, con restos de gusanos y olor a fango, ni tampoco un agujero seco,desnudo y arenoso, sin nada en que sentarse o que comer: era un agujero-hobbit, y eso significa comodidad.”

“the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”

“Each day before the end of eveshe sought her lover, nor would him leave,until the stars were dimmed, and daycame glimmering eastward silver-grey.Then trembling-veiled she would appear,and dance before him, half in fear;there flitting just before his feetshe gently chid with laughter sweet:'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me!For fain thy dancing I would see!”

“In Dwimordene,in LorienSeldom have walked the feet of Men, Few mortal eyes have seen the lightThat lies there ever,long and bright. Galadriel!Galadriel! Clear is the water of your well;White is the star in your white hand; Unmarred,unstained is leaf and land In Dwimordene,in LorienMore fair than thoughts of Mortal Men.”

“Quite a merry gathering!...What's that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think for me.”

“Aragorn looked at the pale stars, and at the moon, now sloping behind the western hills that enclosed the valley. 'This is a night as long as years', he said. 'How long will the day tarry?''Dawn is not far off', said Gamling, who had now climbed up beside him. 'But dawn will not help us, I fear''Yet dawn is ever the hope of men', said Aragorn.”

“Arise now, arise, Riders of Théoden!Dire deeds awake, dark is it eastward.Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!Forth Eorlingas!”

“We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it," I said. Even if I were such a man as to desire this thing, and even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, still I should take those words as a vow, and be held by them.”

“In many ways,' answered the wizard. 'It is far more powerful than I ever dared to think at first, so powerful that in the end it would utterly overcome anyone of mortal race who possessed it. It would possess him.”

“Don't the great tales never end?""No, they never end as tales," said Frodo. "But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.”

“There are other men, and other lives, and time still to be.”

“Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?”

“Ecthelion must be similarly from Aegthelion. Latter element is a derivative of √stel 'remain firm'. The form with prefix 'sundóma', estel, was used in Q{uenya} and S{indarin} for 'hope' – sc. a temper of mind, steady, fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose. The unprefixed stel- gave [? S verb] thel 'intend, mean, purpose, resolve, will'. So Q ? þelma 'a fixed idea,..., will.”

“Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.”

“I can manage," said Frodo. "I must.”

“If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”

“We don't want any adventures here! You might try over the Hill or Across the Water.”

“Then Aragorn stooped and looked in her face, and it was indeed white as a lily, cold as frost, and hard as graven stone. But he bent and kissed her on the brow, and called her softly, saying:'Éowyn Éomund's daughter, awake! For your enemy has passed away!”

“For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die?- Aragorn about Éowyn”

“the quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened,”

“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.”

“The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.”

“The grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”