45 Inspiring Tolkien Quotes

J.R.R. Tolkien, the brilliant mind behind the epic worlds of Middle-earth, has enchanted readers for decades with his rich narratives and profound wisdom. His works are not merely stories of fantasy, but deep wells of inspiration, touching on themes of courage, friendship, and the enduring struggle between good and evil. In this carefully curated collection, we delve into 45 of the most inspiring quotes from Tolkien's expansive universe, each offering a glimpse into the timeless allure of his storytelling. Whether you're an ardent fan or new to his tales, these quotes will surely ignite your imagination and provide a source of motivation and reflection. Journey with us through the literary legacy of Tolkien and discover the captivating insights that continue to resonate across generations.

1. “I am in fact, a hobbit in all but size” - J.R.R. Tolkien

2. “His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

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

4. “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor 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

5. “¡Es que no soy ningun hombre viviente! Lo que tus ojos ven es una mujer. Soy Éowyn hija de Eomund. Pretendes impedir que me acerque a mi señor y pariente. ¡Vete de aqui si no eres una criatura inmortal! Porque vivo o espectro oscuro, te traspasare con mi espada si lo tocas!” - J.R.R. Tolkien

6. “¿A qué le teméis, Señora?-le preguntó Aragorn.-A una jaula. A vivir encerrada detrás de barrotes, hasta que la costumbre y la vejez acepten el cautiverio, y la posibilidad y aún el deseo de llevar a cabo grandes hazañas se hayan perdido para siempre.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

7. “Aw, fudge,' floated down to me, as a couple of golden eyes peered over a third-floor window ledge. 'You're a freaking dhampir. Why are you reading Tolkien?'I shrugged, then had to dodge the potted geranium he threw at me. 'After five hundred years, you've read just about everything. Besides, he had hella world-building skills.” - Karen Chance

8. “The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled, "Fuck subtle.” - Jim Butcher

9. “Well, you can go on looking forward," said Gandalf. "There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

10. “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

11. “He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.” - Peter S. Beagle

12. “Under the Mountain dark and tallThe King has come unto his hall!His foe is dead,the Worm of Dread,And ever so his foes shall fall.The sword is sharp, the spear is long,The arrow swift, the Gate is strong;The heart is bold that looks on gold;The dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,While hammers fells like ringing bellsIn places deep, where dark things sleep,In hollow halls beneath the fells.-from The Hobbit (Dwarves Battle Song)” - J.R.R. Tolkien

13. “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.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

14. “Your talk of sniffling riders with invisible noses has unsettled me.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

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

16. “As a lord was heldfor the strength of his body and stoutness of heart.Much lore he learned, and loved wisdombut fortune followed him in few desires;oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned;what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not;and full friendship he found not easily,nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad.He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldomfor the sundering sorrow that filled his youth...(On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin)” - J.R.R. Tolkien

17. “J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I’ve heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures’ myths, and maybe that was true. I don’t know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight.” - N.K. Jemisin

18. “Gandalf never had this kind of problem. He had exactly this problem, actually, standing in front of the hidden Dwarf door to Moria. Remember when . . . I sighed. Sometimes my inner monologue annoys even me. “Edro, edro,” I muttered. “Open.” I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and ventured, “Mellon.” Nothing happened. The wards stayed. I guessed the Corpsetaker had never read Tolkien. Tasteless bitch.” - Jim Butcher

19. “He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

20. “Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders…” - Lev Grossman

21. “Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.” - N.D. Wilson

22. “Farewell," they cried, "Wherever you fare till your eyries receive you at the journey's end!" That is the polite thing to say among eagles."May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks," answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

23. “The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.” - Tom Shippey

24. “‎Entre las historias de dolor y de ruina que nos llegaron de la oscuridad de aquel entonces, hay sin embargo algunas en las que en medio del llanto resplandece la alegría, y a la sombra de la muerte hay una luz que resiste…” - J.R.R. Tolkien

25. “No ames demasiado la obra de tus manos ni las invenciones de tu corazón.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

26. “To be a convincing story, you've got to know what you're talking about. In EVERY detail."-Rayner Unwin” - Jeff Shanley

27. “And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

28. “Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . .. . . (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings” - J.R.R. Tolkien

29. “The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.” - Jo Walton

30. “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.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

31. “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.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

32. “I did not buy a book called Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which has the temerity to compare itself, on the front cover, to 'Tolkien at his best.' The back cover attributes the quote to the Washington Post, a newspaper whose quotations will always damn a book for me from now on. How dare they? And how dare the publishers? It isn't a comparison anyone could make, except to say 'Compared to Tolkien at his best, this is dross.' I mean you could say that even about really brilliant books like A Wizard of Earthsea. I expect Lord Foul's Bane (horrible title, sounds like a Conan book) is more like Tolkien at his worst, which would be the beginning of The Simarillion.The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect.” - Jo Walton

33. “But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.No, said Tolkien, they are not....just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.” - Humphrey Carpenter

34. “When I say "narrative", I do not mean simply the plot, I mean considerably more. Plots and their shapes--the bare outlines of stories--were something I know J.R.R. Tolkien himself was interested in. When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject--at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away.” - Diana Wynne Jones

35. “Books ought to have good endings.How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?” - J.R.R. Tolkien

36. “I totally geeked when I discovered (while in college) that Tolkien had a published version of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', so that's my favorite version. I think I have 3 or 4 copies on my bookshelf” - Virginia Chandler

37. “It is a lovely language,but it takes a very long time to say anything in it,unless it is worth taking a long time to say,and to listen to.-Treebeard/Fangorn” - J.R.R. Tolkien

38. “Don't put a lump of rock under my elbow again!” - J.R.R. Tolkien

39. “Did he say:"Hullo,Pippin!This is a pleasant surprise!"?No,indeed!He said:"Get up,you tom-fool of a Took!Where,in the name of wonder,in all this ruin is Treebeard?I want him.Quick"-Pippin Took” - J.R.R. Tolkien

40. “You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women.” - Neil Gaiman

41. “I am reading The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much like going on a journey. When I put it down to this, I feel as if I am also waiting with Pippin for the echoes of that stone down the well.” - Jo Walton

42. “I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955” - Tolkien

43. “While persistence offers no guarantees, it does give 'luck' a chance to operate.” - Tom Shippey

44. “Tres Anillos para los Reyes Elfos bajo el cielo. Siete para los Señores Enanos en palacios de piedra. Nueve para los Hombres Mortales condenados a morir. Uno para el Señor Oscuro, sobre el trono oscuro en la Tierra de Mordor donde se extienden las Sombras. Un Anillo para gobernarlos a todos. Un Anillo para encontrarlos, un Anillo para atraerlos a todos y atarlos en las tinieblas en la Tierra de Mordor donde se extienden las Sombras.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

45. “Gandalf and Pippin came to Merry's room, and there they found Aragorn standing by the bed. 'Poor old Merry!' cried Pippin, and he ran to the bedside, for it seemed to him that his friend looked worse and a greyness in his face, as if a weight of years and sorrow lay upon him; and suddenly a fear seized Pippin that Merry would die. 'Do not be afraid,' Aragorn said, 'I came in time, and I have called him back. He is weary now, and grieved, and he has taken a hurt like the lady Eowyn, daring to smite that deadly thing. But these evils can be amended, so strong and gay a spirit is in him. His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.' Then Aragorn laid his hand on Merry's head, and passing his hand gently through the brown curls , he touched the eyelids, and called him by name. And when the fragrance of athelas stole through the room, like the scent of orchards, and of heather in the sunshine full of bees, suddenly Merry awoke, and he said: 'I am hungry. What is the time?' 'Past supper-time now,' said Pippin; 'though I daresay I could bring you something, if they will let me.' 'They will indeed," said Gandalf, . 'And anything else that this Rider of Rohan may desire, if it can be found in Minas Tirith, where his name is in honour." 'Good!' said Merry. 'Then I would like supper first, and after that a pipe.” - J.R.R. Tolkien